Jean Khalil Chamoun
2021أرض النساء
Jean Khalil Chamoun
Acclaimed director Jean Chamoun looks at the lives and works of some of the women who have joined in the fight for their Palestinian homeland. We learn of young resistance fighter Kifah Afifi’s experience as a survivor of the 1982 Shatila massacre in Lebanon when she was just twelve years old. She tells about fighting the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon in the 1990s and of her imprisonment in the Khiam detention facility, which was run by Israel’s auxiliary militia, the South Lebanon Army.
Women Beyond Borders
Zahrat al-Qindul
Jean Khalil Chamoun, Mai Masri
Colette O'Neil, Beatie Edney
In this award-winning documentary, directors Masri and Chamoun focus on the women who played a crucial role in fighting the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon. Preserving their stories on camera, Wild Flowers: Women of South Lebanon is a poignant documentary about courage, resistance, and hope.
Wild Flowers: Women of South Lebanon
Tall el Zaatar
Jean Khalil Chamoun, Pino Adriano
In the early summer of 1976, right-wing militias representing a coalition of ultra-nationalist and counter-revolutionary forces laid siege to the refugee camp of Tall al-Zaatar (“Hill of Thyme”) in Beirut. After holding out for months without food, water, or medical supplies, and under heavy artillery and sniper fire, the camp fell to the militias on 12 August. What followed was one of the worst atrocities of the civil war, with over 2,500 civilians massacred and the camp razed to the ground. Produced after the massacre, but featuring footage shot before and during the siege, Tall al-Zaatar remembers the camp and its community, recounting the long months of siege and resistance, and recalling the horrors of the massacre through the testimony of survivors.
Tall el Zaatar
Taht al-Anqad
Jean Khalil Chamoun, Mai Masri
Under the Rubble is the filmmakers’ harrowing attempt to tell the real story behind the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon as it took place in Beirut—a traumatizing experience for the city and its people. This moving and informative documentary won the Special Jury Award at the Valencia Film Festival.
Under the Rubble
مصابيح الذاكرة
Jean Khalil Chamoun, Mai Masri
After her husband was kidnapped in 1982 during the civil war in Lebanon, Wada Hilwani gathered together the families of the kidnap victims and formed the Committee for the Families of the Kidnapped and Missing. Decades after the end of the war, these families continue their painful search for the truth about their loved ones, and for justice against war crimes.
Lanterns of Memory
بيروت: جيل الحرب
Jean Khalil Chamoun, Mai Masri
Filmed on the streets of Beirut, War Generation Beirut is a mesmerizing, award-winning documentary that explores the life experiences of three generations of young people as they struggle to survive in Lebanon’s war-torn capitol city. The film also traces the history and origins of Lebanon's Civil War.
War Generation
أحلام معلقة
Jean Khalil Chamoun, Mai Masri
In Suspended Dreams, Jean Chamoun and Mai Masri link the stories of four people who are attempting to reconstruct their lives after Lebanon's long and devastating civil war. The film features two ex-militia fighters from Beirut; a woman searching for her missing husband; a playwright from southern Lebanon. Each share their lives and hardships amidst the rubble of their war-torn homeland.
Suspended Dreams
رهينة الانتظار
Jean Khalil Chamoun
When Leila, a young doctor, returns to her village in south Lebanon, she finds it badly damaged after the 1993 Israeli attack. Israeli bombing during this episode razed 50 villages and left half a million civilians homeless, causing a flood of refugees into Beirut. Many of those who fled south Lebanon have not returned, choosing instead to live a scavenging existence in bombed-out buildings in the capital, where they’re out of range of the Israeli-occupied “security zone” in the south. Through Leila’s relationship with her family and the women and children of the surrounding villages, we get to know the hopes and dreams of the people who have remained in south Lebanon as they work to rebuild their homes and their lives.
Hostage of Time