As part of the L’Orient-Le Jour festival at the Beirut Hippodrome, a roundtable titled “Creating under constraints: artists under surveilled freedoms” will bring together three leading figures in Lebanon’s artistic scene: filmmaker Danielle Arbid, actress Rita Hayek, and cultural programmer Hania Mroueh. The event will be held Saturday, Sept. 13, at 6:30 p.m., and will be moderated by Maya Ghandour Hert, head of the newspaper’s culture section.
All three share a direct connection to cinema, an art form that in Lebanon faces some of the harshest limitations: archaic laws, repeated censorship, weak infrastructure, and political pressure. The discussion will explore what it means to keep creating in an environment that seems to narrow each day.
Hayek will describe the risks of being an actress in the Middle East, where performance often means confronting fear, misunderstanding, and threats. Mroueh will emphasize that filmmaking in Lebanon is not just storytelling but an act of carving out freedom where none exists. Arbid will reflect on the political weight of intimate gestures, where filming itself becomes resistance.
The panel will ask: How can constraints fuel creativity? Can art remain a refuge as freedoms shrink? And how can artists defend a cause in a world overwhelmed by imposed silences?
The speakers:
- Danielle Arbid: Born in Beirut, based in France since 1987. A filmmaker and screenwriter, she gained recognition with the documentary Seule avec la guerre (2000) about the Lebanese Civil War and later works such as Dans les champs de bataille (2004), Un homme perdu (2007), Peur de rien (2015), and Passion simple (2020).
- Rita Hayek: Lebanese actress trained in Lebanon and France, who gained international attention for her role in Ziad Doueiri’s The Insult, nominated at the 2018 Oscars. She divides her career between theater, television, and film, blending local and international projects.
- Hania Mroueh: Programmer and cultural director. In 2006, she founded Metropolis, Beirut’s first arthouse cinema, and has been a central figure in bringing independent Arab and international cinema to Lebanon despite crises.
The roundtable will be held in French with simultaneous English translation. Admission is free. The “Un vent de liberté” festival runs at the Beirut Hippodrome, with full program details available here.
