Le jour est la nuit & Maintenant • Ghassan Salhab

Ghassan Salhab is one of the most important Lebanese filmmakers today. His films Phantom Beirut and Terra Incognita, as well as The Mountain and The Valley, to be followed by The River, forming a loose trilogy, reveal a mastery of cinematography as well as a political engagement that see Salhab tackle social issues in this country where he has always filmed. Alongside his features produced in difficult conditions due to the current state of Lebanese cinema, Salhab makes shorts: filmic poems and political documentaries. Le jour est la nuit and Maintenant, which are being premiered at Arsmondo, make statements in film using deliberately minimal means.

They are eloquent expressions of a desire for a new reality. As Salhab puts it: "The uprising in Lebanon was seriously starting to run out of steam; the first lockdown abruptly interrupted it, temporarily, we think. Now, as Bernard Noël wrote, we must raise our fists and fight the memory."