Boston Palestine Film Festival 2008

A boat embarks on a besieged Beirut to evacuate foreign nationals. From under the rubble of destroyed buildings, relief workers pull the bodies of the dead. Moving between light and darkness, life and its extinction, bodies redraw the boundaries of other bodies, the smell of death cloaking all. This haunting film, transmits, without music or excessive gestures, in 10 minutes and just five shots, the anguish of death during and in the aftermath of the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon.

Maher Abi Samra studied theatre at the Lebanese University, and majored in audiovisual studies at the Institut National de l'Image et du Son in Paris. He worked as a photographer for Lebanese newspapers and for Agence France Press and Reuters. He wrote and directed several documentaries, including Mariam (2006), Rond-Point Chatila (2004), Women of Hezbollah (2000), and Building on the Waves (1995).