After 20 years, Rawane Nassif returned to the Msaytbeh district of Beirut, Lebanon. She touchingly shares her impressions and relationship with the place where she grew up. As a historically militant and left-wing district, Msaytbeh was profoundly transformed by the effects of the civil war. The filmmaker superimposes her childhood memories onto contemporary images of Msaytbeh projected onto the bathroom wall of the building that once marked the border between East and West Beirut, making the influence of place on identity and collective memory all the more clear. This tender and necessary motif brings the buried traces of the conflict to the surface, revealing them anew. Msaytbeh, the elevated place is a personal ode to what is no longer and what is yet to come. (MF)

competition : National Short and Medium-Length Competition

Msaytbeh, the elevated place