A Summer Night in Lebanon
A starry summer night in Beirut. Toufic, a young Lebanese man, goes to a party with the hope of winning the heart of the beautiful Yasmin. The women wear low-cut necklines. The young people drink, dance, and flirt, until a quarrelsome and armed BMW driver attacks Toufic in the parking lot of the apartment building. There is an angry scuffle.
Humiliated and charged up, Toufic leaves Yasmin and the party. It is not the first time that he has had to back down in such fights. This time the normally even-tempered Toufic wants to get his revenge. He rides through nighttime Beirut on his moped, buys a gun without any problems, and is confronted with violence on almost every street corner. Among other things, he witnesses a kidnapping in the middle of the street.
Not an exaggeration
"Anyone can be the victim of violence in Lebanon. While I was working on the rough cut of the film, a friend told me I had exaggerated the abduction scene. A few days later, she brought me a newspaper article that described this kidnapping scene from my film exactly," says director Michel Kammoun.
"Men dressed in black get out of a jeep, pull a guy out of his car, and drive away. The guy vanishes, and nobody knows who abducted him or where he is. I still have the newspaper clipping."
In his film "Falafel", Kammoun, who is almost 40, describes the fragile balance in Lebanon after the civil war. He shot the film in 2004; exactly a year later, the conflict flared up again. Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in 2005, and war with Israel broke out in 2006.
Constant latent tension
Supporters and opponents of the Lebanese government have continued to battle each other fiercely. The Lebanese had no president for several months, because they could not reach an agreement. "It's a contradictory situation. Although there is no war, the problems in Lebanese society have not been solved; there is constant latent tension," says Kammoun. "The country is like a dormant volcano that can erupt again at any time."
In his film, Kammoun wanted to show this ambivalence from the perspective of youth – the generation that did not take part in the civil war but must live with the consequences nevertheless. Typical of young people, however, says Kammoun, is their zest for life – despite the continuing crisis and lack of prospects in the country. In order to convey this, Kammoun made his film fast-paced and set the action over a single night.
"In Lebanon, you have the feeling that you have to experience things at an accelerated pace, because you never know what might happen the next day. That's why people go out so often there – they want to enjoy themselves."
Chickpea patties and street philosophers
A falafel vendor tells Toufic how to live his life – using the example of a deep-fried chickpea patty. He is one of the many street philosophers, as Kammoun calls them, whom you frequently encounter in Lebanon and who make the film so authentic.
Kammoun worked on "Falafel" for three years. In a country where an infrastructure and, in particular, financing for films are virtually nonexistent, he had to start his own production and distribution company. Now he wants to make up time, and he is working on three other projects concurrently, one of which will be set in France. Kammoun studied film there in the early 1990s.
Kammoun can understand that thousands of Lebanese cannot cope with the constant insecurity and prefer to leave the country. In "Falafel", Toufic's younger brother finally prevents him from taking revenge on the aggressive BMW driver. For Kammoun, the family is one of the few refuges from the chaos of today's Lebanon.
Guylaine Tappaz
© Qantara.de 2008
Translated from the German by Phyllis Anderson
Qantara.de
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