The cats, the sea, and everything in between.

synopsis

Documentary filmmaker Karel Malkoun comes from Lebanon, but has been living in Canada for the past few years. In 2022, when the economic crisis in her native country was at its peak, she decided to visit her family there. She turned her short trip into a collage-like diary in which she reflects on her relationship with her homeland, which is in a state of protracted decay. The film is composed of spontaneous snapshots capturing the author's stay, interspersed with inserted captions serving as personal, often poetically formulated comments and observations. As a result, the film does not hide its strongly subjective perspective, but at the same time builds on it to make an important statement that shows the transformation of Lebanese society in everyday details such as the appearance of the city itself or in the intimate sphere of the author's family life. Malkoun has created an immediate, raw, and deliberately unsorted impression capturing the absurdity and suddenness of situations that took her by surprise as a native returning from abroad.

“They got married in the war, they had us in the war. We grew up in the war. Went to school in the war. Got married and had our kids, in the war. And also we will die, in the war. Regardless of whether it is an economical war or an actual war.”

biography

Karel Malkoun is a Canadian director originally from Lebanon. She is the author of the short films Words and Lights (2017) on the theme of adolescence and the autobiographical Somewhere, but not Here (2024).

film details

director:	Karel Malkoun
producer:	Karel Malkoun
editing:	Christelle Chebli
sound design:	Marwan Tohme