Manal Issa

Following an accident on a set, a director tries to pick up the pieces of reality.

In post-war Lebanon, Ida, a young Lebanese girl, flees her small village and her alcoholic mother and goes to the big city. There, she starts dating a European man not knowing what is in store for her.

A young woman makes her way back home to her parents’ house in the middle of the night leaving a bad experience behind. Haunting pressures to fit back into the family dynamics as well as revealing details of her life abroad weigh heavy on her. Feeling cornered, her anxieties resurface, leading her to find solace in another part of her Beirut life that she had forsaken. A life that is for her as familiar and foreign now as it ever was.

The exits of a Berlin courtyard are blocked by the police due to an ambiguous event outside and a state of emergency occurs. Among the residents of the building, insecurities start to pump fear. Suspicion takes over panic, prejudices bring polarization and another question appears: Is the real danger coming from inside or outside?

In 1983, French actress Maria Schneider gives an interview for the TV show Cinéma Cinémas. The conversation takes an unexpected turn when she challenges film industry practices and is asked to talk about the controversial film Last Tango in Paris (1972).

Set in the desolate wreckage of Beirut’s Piccadilly Theater after decades of war, the film recounts three days in the life of a writer and actors. As they seek to revive the ghostly theater with a production of Sophocles’ Elektra, the actors witness the vivid dreams of the writer who has to confront the contempt and lies of the two-faced actors and ultimately her own murder.

Lebanon, 1982. To keep a promise made to an old friend, Georges, an idealistic theater director, travels to Beirut for a project as utopian as it is risky: to stage the play Antigone on the front line, in order to steal a moment of peace from the raging civil war. The characters will be played by actors from different political and religious camps. Lost in a city and a conflict he knows nothing about, Georges is guided by Marwan. As fighting resumes, everything is soon called into question, and Georges, who falls in love with Imane, has to face up to the reality of war.

In the near future, a micro-worker performs tasks that are suggested to her. Between data center maintenance and data processing, she hesitantly searches for ways to feel emotions. Devoid of social links, this world is saturated with data.

Video #2 of Finite Rants, a series of eight visual essays commissioned by Fondazione Prada and curated by Luigi Alberto Cippini and Niccolò Gravina. Bertrand Bonello reworks the last minutes of his 2016 film Nocturama, which documents the logistical operations and the organization of terrorist attacks in Paris by a group of teenagers. Starting with "Où en êtes-vous?", a video commissioned by the Centre Pompidou in 2014 and conceived as a letter to his then 11-year-old daughter, the director makes a new work altering the final sequence of Nocturama and completely modifying the textual component and the soundtrack in this video essay as a second letter written for his now 17-year-old daughter.

Joseph and his two sons, Joachim and Ivan, form a close-knit family but fail to see that each one is losing control of his life. Joachim is supposed to be studying psychiatry but spends most of his time daydreaming about his ex-girlfriend, Ivan cannot fit in at school despite being very smart, and Joseph has secretly quit his job as a doctor and is trying to become a writer. While there is plenty of affection at home, all three are also, clumsily, searching for love...

18-year-old Lina arrives in Paris for her studies. She comes to look for what she has never found in Lebanon, her country of origin: a certain form of freedom. The survival instinct as the only baggage, she sails from one Paris to another to the rhythm of her romantic encounters.

Some young folks, tired of the society they're living in, plan a bomb attack over Paris before taking shelter for a night in a shopping center.

Beirut, on an autumn day. The city is on the edge of chaos, but for Maya, Tarek, Yasmina and Rami, aged between 17 and 22 years old, it is just an ordinary day during which they question themselves about sex, love and night time hanging out.

Damascus, Spring 2011. It's the early stages of the civil war. 25-year-old Nahla is torn between her desire for freedom and the hope of leaving the country thanks to her arranged marriage with Samir, a Syrian expatriate in the USA. When he chooses her younger, more docile sister Myriam, Nahla finds refuge at her neighbor's, the mysterious Ms Jiji.

Ulysses, a secluded artist who mysteriously retired a few years ago, meets Mona, a young art student full of life. The encounter will change them both.

Malek, a Lebanese immigrant from Montreal, is haunted by the violent death of his sister. Convinced that he could have avoided this tragedy, he is consumed with guilt. He lives alone, poor, jobless until he meets Shohreh, an Iranian girl, with whom he falls in love. A new life opens up to him and he quickly finds work. Malek gradually regains his dignity but the past resurfaces to the point where he is pushed, almost in spite of himself, to finally settle his accounts with himself.

Paris, France, 1979. Rose, a rebellious orphaned teenager, and Michel, a young aspiring painter, enjoy their crazy love under the neon lights of the decadent nightclub Le Palace, where they establish an ambiguous relationship with Lucille and Hubert, two bohemian bourgeois who will change their lives.

Maia, a single mother, lives in Montreal with her teenage daughter, Alex. On Christmas Eve, they receive an unexpected delivery: notebooks, tapes, and photos Maia, from 13 to 18 years old, sent from Beirut to her best friend who left for Paris to escape the civil war. Maia refuses to open the box or confront its memories, but Alex secretly begins diving into it. Between fantasy and reality, Alex enters the world of her mother’s tumultuous, passionate adolescence during the Lebanese civil war, unlocking mysteries of a hidden past.

From war-torn Syria to the 2016 Rio Olympics, two young sisters embark on a risky voyage, putting their hearts and their swimming skills to heroic use.

Four darkly funny tales about Lebanon: Activists planning a protest descend into internal strife. Three sisters and their mother argue while an incompetent plumber destroys their flat. Depressed life coach Malek wants to die and seeks help from a «death coach». A stand-up comedian who jokes about a meteor strike that could put Lebanon out of its misery, is blamed when it appears to come true.

In Beirut on September 22, 2024, just hours before bombing escalated throughout the country, the Lebanese French actress Manal Issa considers the role of the actor during the unfolding global conflict.

In three reenactments of a controversial 1983 television interview, actors Manal Issa, Aïssa Maïga, and Isabel Sandoval play late French actress Maria Schneider. “The Listening Takes” is a prescient confrontation with the patriarchal structure of the film industry. [Overview Courtesy of Participant Inc.]

In 2006, as Israeli shells relentlessly rain down on Beirut, Sariah (13), her older sister Nayla, and their mother take refuge in the mountains, making sure not to mention the war raging in Lebanon. Sharp tensions between the three women soon resurface, and the rivalry between the two sisters escalates when Nayla's boyfriend pays her a visit.

A thirtysomething hopes to leave an impact... by hiring a down-on-his-luck cameraman to document his suicide. He plans a number of things off his chest, from declaring his love to his childhood crush to sharing accounts of botched hookups, run-ins with exes and encounters with crooked cops, and a philosophical sex worker. His farewell tour spirals into a night of chaos, revelation, and hilarity. By sunrise, what began as a filmed goodbye becomes a painfully honest and laugh-out-loud portrait of a man and a city desperate to find meaning in a crumbling world.

In Beirut on September 22, 2024, just hours before bombing escalated throughout the country, the Lebanese French actress Manal Issa considers the role of the actor during the unfolding global conflict.

In Beirut on September 22, 2024, just hours before bombing escalated throughout the country, the Lebanese French actress Manal Issa considers the role of the actor during the unfolding global conflict.