A still from Myriam El Hajj’s 2024 "Diaries from Lebanon." (Courtesy of Abbout Productions)
There is a moment of cinema magic in Myriam El Hajj’s documentary “Diaries from Lebanon.” During a fixed-camera conversation with one of her characters — a Civil War veteran lamenting how life has treated him — he stops mid-sentence and stares at something to the left of the camera.“It’s here,” he declares. Startled, the filmmaker gasps from off-frame.He moves out of the frame, eliminates the intruder with a slap of his shoe and reaches back into the frame to grab a Kleenex. Stepping back into the frame, he drops the soiled tissue in the bin.“It had to die,” explains the former gunman. Hajj’s film is concerned with a period in Lebanon’s recent history that seems unique. Conventionally seen to have begun in 2019, this period commenced with the euphoria of country-wide demonstrations against the political status quo (sometimes called ‘the...
There is a moment of cinema magic in Myriam El Hajj’s documentary “Diaries from Lebanon.” During a fixed-camera conversation with one of her characters — a Civil War veteran lamenting how life has treated him — he stops mid-sentence and stares at something to the left of the camera.“It’s here,” he declares. Startled, the filmmaker gasps from off-frame.He moves out of the frame, eliminates the intruder with a slap of his shoe and reaches back into the frame to grab a Kleenex. Stepping back into the frame, he drops the soiled tissue in the bin.“It had to die,” explains the former gunman. Hajj’s film is concerned with a period in Lebanon’s recent history that seems unique. Conventionally seen to have begun in 2019, this period commenced with the euphoria of country-wide demonstrations against the political status quo...