The Razor's Edge
This recurring program showcases works from Québec’s audiovisual heritage, digitized and restored by the Cinémathèque québécoise, or thanks to its contribution. Since 2018, we have restored around fifty independent films thanks to the support of the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec as part of its Digital Cultural Plan. Other works have been restored in collaboration with local or international cultural organisations, using elements preserved in our collections.
The restoration of this film was carried out in collaboration with the Swiss Cinematheque and the Jocelyne Saab Association, using elements from our collections.
Beirut, a vulnerable, bleeding city, constantly under siege. Samar and Karim meet in this inferno of war. Samar, a refugee, only 16 years old, has grown up among the fighters. Her fierce beauty combines the toughness of a warrior with the tenderness of an incurable romantic. Karim, scion of a wealthy family, is an intellectual and artist who has joined the nationalist cause out of conviction. The war creates a bond between the two, despite their utterly different backgrounds. In the violence and devastation that closes in on them, Samar and Karim discover the meaning of happiness as they struggle for survival.
Jocelyne Saab
Jocelyne Saab is a Franco-Lebanese director, photographer, and visual artist. She is recognized as one of the pioneers of the New Lebanese Cinema. As a freelance TV journalist for European, North American, and Japanese channels, she directed numerous documentary films on the Lebanese War, the Iraq War, Kurdistan, Iran, Syria, the Golan Heights, Western Sahara, the consequences of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Asia, particularly Vietnam. In less than thirty years, Jocelyne Saab directed a total of thirty documentaries ans several fiction films, contributing to the creation of a distinct Lebanese-Arab cinematic style. One of her works, Dunia, caused a scandal when it was presented at the Cairo Film Festival in 2005 and was censored upon its released in Egyptian cinemas. Parallel to her work as a filmmaker, Jocelyne Saab produced an extensive body of photographic work. In 2008, she published her book Zones de guerres, a collection of her photographs documenting five decades of conflict in the Third World and the Middle East. She exhibited another series of one hundred photographs, Sense, Icons and Sensitivity, in several countries. In 2016, she created a final photographic series and two art videos, One Dollar a Day and Imaginary Postcard.
