The port explosion of 2020 damaged just about everything in the city and this painful but tender doc follows a film crew who try to resume work
‘How much bad news can you get in one day?” That’s the production manager of a Lebanese movie called Costa Brava, which is due to start shooting any day. But Beirut is in chaos. It’s 2020, just weeks after the catastrophic port explosion that killed more than 200 people and injured thousands. The blast destroyed the office of the production company, and cinematographer Joe Saade lost an eye. After agonised meetings, Costa Brava’s young director Mounia Akl and her crew have decided to go ahead with the shoot.
Filmed by Cyril Aris, this fly-on-the-wall study is a painful watch, with some heartbreaking moments; but it’s tender too, and funny. As the shoot date approaches, the film looks doomed. A currency crisis triggered...
‘How much bad news can you get in one day?” That’s the production manager of a Lebanese movie called Costa Brava, which is due to start shooting any day. But Beirut is in chaos. It’s 2020, just weeks after the catastrophic port explosion that killed more than 200 people and injured thousands. The blast destroyed the office of the production company, and cinematographer Joe Saade lost an eye. After agonised meetings, Costa Brava’s young director Mounia Akl and her crew have decided to go ahead with the shoot.
Filmed by Cyril Aris, this fly-on-the-wall study is a painful watch, with some heartbreaking moments; but it’s tender too, and funny. As the shoot date approaches, the film looks doomed. A currency crisis triggered...
- 4/30/2024
- by Cath Clarke
- The Guardian - Film News
Leave it to a film production company to make the best of a bad situation. At least cinematically, that is. In 2020, the Beirut-based Abbout Productions was in pre-production on a film called Costa Brava, Lebanon when the city was rocked by a devastating explosion at the Port of Beirut that decimated much of the area. Cyril Aris’ documentary, world-premiering at Karlovy Vary, chronicles the production team’s determined efforts to go ahead with the film despite a plethora of obstacles. Not only did they have to deal with catastrophic damage to homes and offices, but also the pandemic, fuel shortages and a currency in free fall. Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano compellingly tells the story of filmmaking by fire.
Beirut, of course, is a place that has seen more than its share of travails, as the opening footage of the city in ruins in 1980 during the Lebanese Civil War illustrates.
Beirut, of course, is a place that has seen more than its share of travails, as the opening footage of the city in ruins in 1980 during the Lebanese Civil War illustrates.
- 7/4/2023
- by Frank Scheck
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
This review of “Costa Brava, Lebanon” was first published July 14, 2022, before it opened in New York City.
Mounia Akl’s debut feature film “Costa Brava, Lebanon” is valiant filmmaking. Using the beauty of cinema to show the destruction of man’s cruelty to the environment is not just effective — it’s heartbreaking.
In a film landscape dominated by blockbusters, “Costa Brava, Lebanon” offers a reality check, reminding us that there are indeed concerns bigger than our own entertainment. It’s indie filmmaking at its most productive.
Set in Akl’s native Lebanon, whose political and environmental unrest helps drive the plot, “Costa Brava, Lebanon,” co-written with Clara Roquet (“10.000 Km”), draws us in with the charming Bardi family, who has gone off the grid. For eight years, husband and wife Walid and Souraya (Oscar-nominated “Capernaum” director Nadine Labaki) have lived in the mountains with their two girls — Rim (twins Seana and...
Mounia Akl’s debut feature film “Costa Brava, Lebanon” is valiant filmmaking. Using the beauty of cinema to show the destruction of man’s cruelty to the environment is not just effective — it’s heartbreaking.
In a film landscape dominated by blockbusters, “Costa Brava, Lebanon” offers a reality check, reminding us that there are indeed concerns bigger than our own entertainment. It’s indie filmmaking at its most productive.
Set in Akl’s native Lebanon, whose political and environmental unrest helps drive the plot, “Costa Brava, Lebanon,” co-written with Clara Roquet (“10.000 Km”), draws us in with the charming Bardi family, who has gone off the grid. For eight years, husband and wife Walid and Souraya (Oscar-nominated “Capernaum” director Nadine Labaki) have lived in the mountains with their two girls — Rim (twins Seana and...
- 7/21/2022
- by Ronda Racha Penrice
- The Wrap
Discouraged identities and taboo desires emerge tentatively into the open in “Joyland,” but unlike in a many a coming-out drama, there’s no identified villain or oppressor — just an uncertain world in its own state of societal and generational transition. Pakistani writer-director Saim Sadiq’s confident, expressive debut feature is conscientiously fair to everyone in its Lahore-set domestic melodrama of secrets, lies and unforeseen self-discovery, but never feels like it’s hedging its bets or shying away from harder truths. Tartly funny and plungingly sad in equal measure, this is nuanced, humane queer filmmaking, more concerned with the textures and particulars of its own intimate story than with grander social statements — even if, as a tale of transgender desire in a Muslim country, its very premise makes it a boundary-breaker.
As the first Pakistani production ever to unspool in the Cannes official selection, “Joyland” entered the festival as something of a milestone,...
As the first Pakistani production ever to unspool in the Cannes official selection, “Joyland” entered the festival as something of a milestone,...
- 6/10/2022
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Saim Sadiq’s feature debut, “Joyland,” returns to the world of erotic theater that he explored in his 2019 Venice and SXSW winner “Darling.”
“Joyland” will premiere at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard strand. The title, the first Pakistani film to be selected in Cannes, will vie for the Caméra d’Or.
The tale of sexual revolution sees a patriarchal family yearn for the birth of a baby boy to continue the family line, while their youngest son secretly joins an erotic dance theater and falls for an ambitious transsexual starlet.
Sadiq drew inspiration from his own family and a theater close to his home in Lahore. “I came from a very morally upright, middle-class conservative family, and to find out that this other world exists, literally like a 10-minute drive from my house, that I never knew of. It’s so different, the world of the theater, where sexuality is not...
“Joyland” will premiere at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard strand. The title, the first Pakistani film to be selected in Cannes, will vie for the Caméra d’Or.
The tale of sexual revolution sees a patriarchal family yearn for the birth of a baby boy to continue the family line, while their youngest son secretly joins an erotic dance theater and falls for an ambitious transsexual starlet.
Sadiq drew inspiration from his own family and a theater close to his home in Lahore. “I came from a very morally upright, middle-class conservative family, and to find out that this other world exists, literally like a 10-minute drive from my house, that I never knew of. It’s so different, the world of the theater, where sexuality is not...
- 5/22/2022
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
Condor has picked up French rights to Saim Sadiq’s drama “Joyland” ahead of its world premiere in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard. The title, the first Pakistani film to be selected in Cannes, will vie for the Caméra d’Or.
Film Constellation is representing international sales rights. WME Independent is representing North American rights.
Sadiq’s debut feature centers on the extended patriarchal Ranas family, who yearn for the birth of another boy. Meanwhile, their youngest son secretly joins an erotic dance theater and falls for an ambitious trans starlet. Their impossible love story slowly illuminates the entire Rana family’s desire for a sexual rebellion.
Condor’s slate also includes Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir Part I & II,” Kelly Reichardt’s “First Cow,” Paul Schrader’s “The Card Counter,” Kogonada’s “After Yang,” and Sundance 2022 Grand Jury Prize winner “Utama” by Alejandro Loayza Grisi.
Condor’s Alexis Mas said:...
Film Constellation is representing international sales rights. WME Independent is representing North American rights.
Sadiq’s debut feature centers on the extended patriarchal Ranas family, who yearn for the birth of another boy. Meanwhile, their youngest son secretly joins an erotic dance theater and falls for an ambitious trans starlet. Their impossible love story slowly illuminates the entire Rana family’s desire for a sexual rebellion.
Condor’s slate also includes Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir Part I & II,” Kelly Reichardt’s “First Cow,” Paul Schrader’s “The Card Counter,” Kogonada’s “After Yang,” and Sundance 2022 Grand Jury Prize winner “Utama” by Alejandro Loayza Grisi.
Condor’s Alexis Mas said:...
- 5/11/2022
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Film Constellation, a U.K- and France-based sales firm, has been appointed to handle international rights for “Joyland,” which is set to be the first Pakistan-made film in Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival. Sales duties will be shared with WME Independent, which is is representing North American rights.
The tale of sexual revolution sees a happily patriarchal joint family yearn for the birth of a baby boy to continue the family line, while their youngest son secretly joins an erotic dance theatre and falls for an ambitious transsexual starlet.
The film is the feature debut of writer and director Saim Sadiq, whose previous short film “Darling” won the Orizzonti Best Short Film award at the 2019 Venice Film Festival and was acquired for worldwide distribution by Focus Features.
The film stars Ali Junejo, Alina Khan, Rasti Farooq, Sarwat Gilani, Sohail Sameer, Salman Peerzada, and Sania Saeed. Cinematography is by Joe Saade.
The tale of sexual revolution sees a happily patriarchal joint family yearn for the birth of a baby boy to continue the family line, while their youngest son secretly joins an erotic dance theatre and falls for an ambitious transsexual starlet.
The film is the feature debut of writer and director Saim Sadiq, whose previous short film “Darling” won the Orizzonti Best Short Film award at the 2019 Venice Film Festival and was acquired for worldwide distribution by Focus Features.
The film stars Ali Junejo, Alina Khan, Rasti Farooq, Sarwat Gilani, Sohail Sameer, Salman Peerzada, and Sania Saeed. Cinematography is by Joe Saade.
- 4/22/2022
- by Patrick Frater and Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
“Where will we run away to this time?” asks Soraya Bakri (Nadine Labaki) of her husband Walid (Saleh Bakri), partly joking but mostly not, when what looks like all the trash in Beirut appears on their rural hideaway’s doorstep. Mounia Akl’s “Costa Brava, Lebanon,” is mostly a bittersweet dramedy built from an intimate, sprightly understanding of internal family dynamics, but it is fringed with the implicit melancholy of Soraya’s question. When she and Walid left noisy, polluted Beirut eight years prior to raise chickens, vegetables and two daughters on a little plot of land in the countryside, were they running-toward or running-away-from? And if living off-grid is your dream — or the dream of the one you love most — what do you do when the grid comes to you?
Dealing with an issue that locates it sometime during the 2015 Beirut Garbage Crisis, when the streets of the city were overflowing with uncollected trash,...
Dealing with an issue that locates it sometime during the 2015 Beirut Garbage Crisis, when the streets of the city were overflowing with uncollected trash,...
- 9/14/2021
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Lebanese director Mounia Akl’s long-gestating first feature, “Costa Brava, Lebanon,” which screens in Venice Horizons, is about her relationship with Beirut and Lebanon “and the complexity of this love/hate relationship that is becoming more and more complicated as our country is falling apart,” she says.
The country’s complications came literally crashing into the pic’s production when Beirut, on Aug. 4, 2020, was devastated by one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded. It left hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands homeless. It also took place during a “Costa Brava” pre-production meeting.
“Our cinematographer [Joe Saade] almost lost his eye, the office was completely destroyed and we walked out knowing that our whole city was destroyed,” she recounts.
Two months later, the “Costa Brava” team decided to go ahead and shoot despite the blast, and also despite the pandemic and Lebanon’s economic collapse, which had depreciated the value of their funding.
The country’s complications came literally crashing into the pic’s production when Beirut, on Aug. 4, 2020, was devastated by one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded. It left hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands homeless. It also took place during a “Costa Brava” pre-production meeting.
“Our cinematographer [Joe Saade] almost lost his eye, the office was completely destroyed and we walked out knowing that our whole city was destroyed,” she recounts.
Two months later, the “Costa Brava” team decided to go ahead and shoot despite the blast, and also despite the pandemic and Lebanon’s economic collapse, which had depreciated the value of their funding.
- 9/6/2021
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
An endangered musician in a Syrian town controlled by Isis must sell his beloved piano in order to escape the country in the gripping drama “Broken Keys.” It marks the feature debut of Columbia U.-trained, Lebanese writer-director Jimmy Keyrouz. Inspired by real events, the feature is an expansion of his 2016 Student Academy Award-winning short “Nocturne in Black.” Now boasting a score by Keyrouz’s famous compatriot Gabriel Yared and a Cannes 2020 label designation, the film combines real-life crisis, potent emotion and an ending of stunning defiance making it a strong entry for Lebanon in the Academy’s international feature competition.
In Sekka, twentysomething pianist Karim shares a bombed-out building with his cousin Maya (Sara Abi Kanaan), an aspiring law student, and many other neighbors of assorted ages and occupations, some of whom belong to an underground resistance opposing Isis. Since playing or listening to music is one of many...
In Sekka, twentysomething pianist Karim shares a bombed-out building with his cousin Maya (Sara Abi Kanaan), an aspiring law student, and many other neighbors of assorted ages and occupations, some of whom belong to an underground resistance opposing Isis. Since playing or listening to music is one of many...
- 1/29/2021
- by Alissa Simon
- Variety Film + TV
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