The Lebanese playwright and screenwriter Antoine Ghandour (1942-2024). (Credit: NNA)
The Lebanese playwright and screenwriter Antoine Ghandour, born on April 5, 1942, in Ain Aalaq, in the Metn region, passed away on Thursday, March 5, leaving behind a prolific body of work that accompanied the first decades of Lebanese television and theater. A prolific yet discreet author, he belonged to that generation of pioneers who shaped the country’s popular narratives, turning figures from its history and collective memory into characters for stage and screen.
Among his most notable creations is the hugely popular series Akhwat Chanay (1973), which left a lasting mark on the early years of Lebanese television. At the heart of this village tableau was a character who became almost mythical: the madman of Chanay, played by Nabih Abou al-Hosn.
Marginalized yet clear-sighted, this “village fool” roamed the streets, voicing truths that no one else dared to speak. Beneath the guise of madness, he skewered the powerful, exposed social hypocrisies and dispensed pearls of popular wisdom.
In contrast to this free and insolent figure of the village, Barbar Agha embodied power in all its gravity. Played by Antoine Kerbaj, the character – based on an Ottoman governor from Tripoli –imposed himself on Lebanese screens as an almost Shakespearean authority, blending power, pride, and fate. Through these contrasting figures, Ghandour displayed the full breadth of his popular theater, skillfully bringing together social satire and historical drama.
Educated at La Sagesse University, where he studied psychology, Antoine Ghandour turned to dramatic writing very early on. His career spanned several decades and included more than a hundred creations – television series, plays, film scripts, radio works, and documentaries broadcast on Lebanese and Arab channels. His texts, often rooted in the social and popular history of Lebanon, brought familiar faces, folk heroes, and characters inspired by national heritage to the stage and to audiences’ living rooms.
In the history of Lebanese television, his name is linked to a significant innovation: many credit him with being the first to write a dramatic episode of an hour and a half for the series Kanat Ayyam and Adib wa Qiss, produced with only two sets, turning this technical constraint into a true dramaturgical exercise.
On the stage, he also took an interest in emblematic figures from Lebanese history. His play Tanios Chahine (1990) revisited the 19th-century peasant leader who became a symbol of social revolt in Mount Lebanon. Other works, such as Al-Qabqab (1979) and Barbar Agha (1980), presented notably at the Casino du Liban, likewise explored popular memory.
At the same time, he accompanied the rise of television in Lebanon with several notable series: Kanat Ayyam (1964), Akhawat Chanay (1973), Barbar Agha (1979), Arba‘ Majanin wa Bas (1982), and Rasif al-Barziana (1985). He also wrote the screenplay for the film Kulluna Fida’iyyoun in 1969.
Awarded multiple prizes and distinctions, his works have also been the subject of academic studies and helped reveal several major figures in Lebanese playwriting. Yet, true to his artistic ideals, Antoine Ghandour always preferred to stay out of the limelight, letting his characters – visionary madmen, rebels or tragic lords – take center stage.
Through them, he helped shape part of Lebanon’s dramatic imagination.
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