![]() ![]() So it was always personal, and the bigger picture was trying to link them all. And archive because I also wanted to give a bigger context to the story and linking it to our collective memory that we live in Lebanon. So I wanted also that we could be in a normal documentary sometimes. And there’s documentary, normal documentary, because I have a person who is searching for something. So I wanted that animation would represent this visual part. “I find it very interesting how the memory and the unconscious mix. Why are they here in my dream, and we are, I don't know where.in Italy?” She laughs. “When you dream, you start imagining a collage of events that happen in your life with people. Making time to have fun Photo: Bassem Fayad, courtesy of ITAR Productions This is where it was natural for me to put all these mediums together, because I thought that it was getting along with this complex character and that each player would be represented – like the performative part of Miguel would be through theatre, the animated parts represent more fantasies, taboos and sacred things, and in a collage way, because I think that memory can reconstruct things in a collage way. I like character driven stories usually, so I wanted really to feel that the spectator is in his mind, and he's imagining things with him, he's travelling to spaces, he's travelling in time. “I wanted to understand him as a human being. And I want to unfold all the layers,” she says. Being gay is usually centred and presented as a big issue, whereas here it’s just one of many aspects of who Miguel is and the story he has to tell. I tell her that I can't think of another film where a gay man has been at the centre of a story like that, with his story representing a larger story. But now he's getting it I think, because we're travelling with the film and he's seeing the people reacting with all these Q&A's we're having.” Of course he always asked me ‘Why my story is important?’ I was wondering, why is it important for me? I didn't tell him of course. He thought that I was just saying this, but slowly when he saw that I was really wanting to do the film, it became serious and he was happy about it. And after I told him, ‘I want to do a film about you.’ He didn't believe it in the beginning. I started to record audio, really getting in all the details. “I came back spoke to him again in Barcelona. "I think that he can be a very beautiful person" - Eliane Raheb Photo: Bassem Fayad, courtesy of ITAR Productions And I really felt it was a metaphor for how religion, family and fascism can shape your identity and make you become a self destructive person. When I went back to Lebanon, I started thinking about the story. He was talking and I felt that his throwing to me all this story was not by chance. And I told him, let's meet another time, the second day, and we met, it was another three hours. I didn't want to be confronted to it again.’ And I didn't want to see it again, you know, after all these years. ![]() ![]() So after we went off to have a drink, and I told him ‘Why were you so much emotional about the film? I felt you were not at ease.’ So he told me ‘Well, because I also participated in the Civil War. It didn't seem to me that he was an ordinary objective person. After the film, when he did the debate, I saw that he was extremely tense as a translator. And he was a big fan, too, and he was watching the film. That film was about also the Civil War, it was called Sleepless Nights. “He was the translator, to translate the debate of one of my films. “It was by purely chance that we met in Barcelona,” she tells me. I really wanted to do something beautiful for a beautiful person, because I think that he can be a very beautiful person.”Ī seasoned documentarian and founding member of the Beirut DC Association for Cinema, Eliane has found multiple ways to explore Lebanon’s story over the course of her career, but this particular film came about almost by accident. ![]() I wanted to give him a dignity through this film. But I really wanted it to be nicely made and complex and fitting not only my expectations, but Miguel's expectations. “I had, the last two years, to pay myself to cover the deficit of the funding. “I did everything to make my vision for this film possible, and I think that I didn't do any compromise, although the funding was extremely difficult,” Eliane tells me when we meet to talk about the film. Eliane Raheb Photo: courtesy of ITAR Productions ![]()
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