Panoptic

synopsis

Lebanese filmmaker Rana Eid’s documentary essay premiered in the Signs of Life section at the Locarno Film Festival, a film in which she captured her journey through Beirut while mourning the death of her father. In an attempt to understand her hometown, she decided to explore its very core – its underground. Because that was exactly how she de facto lived – in hiding, just as everyone else did during the 17-year-long civil war. The director’s personal journey, filled with atmospheric, auditory sensations (she doesn’t deny her years of sound work), reflects Lebanon’s troubled past, as well as its present and future prospects, on a whole different level.

“Drawing into my own memories, Panoptic is both a historical document and the memoir of an ordinary citizen trying to understand the injustices we lived through in Lebanon over the past 40 years.” R. Eid

biography

Rana Eid (1976) is originally from Beirut, where she studied filmcraft at the Université Saint Joseph with a specialization in sound. Since 2003 she’s worked as a sound assistant at the side of a number of renowned Arabian filmmakers and is today considered one of the most respected in the industry. Since 2006 she has been the director of DB Studios for audio post-production. She teaches sound in Lebanon at the Université Saint Esprit de Kaslik. Panoptic is her directorial debut.

more about film