The Beach Boys(2023)

Lebanon, France, Arabic - 75 min

Director

Dima El-Horr

Color

Length

75 min

Language

Arabic

Producer

Sabine Sidawi

INFORMATION

sabinesidawi@gmail.com

The Beach Boys

Lebanon, France

LogLine

In 2003, I met Mounir and Réda sunbathing below the Beirut Corniche. Their hopelessness led to a video, The Blue Sea in your Eyes. 20 years later, I found them in the same place. They introduced me to Adel and Assem. Their melancholy testifies the acceptance of their own defeat.

Synopsis

In 2003, I met Réda sunbathing at AUB beach, where only men attend. His body, beyond the muscles and the youth, expressed a latent despair. He looked like a ruin, a mass of stone. And like all those around them, detach from reality, floating outside of themselves, outside the course of life. Our encounter led to a video, The Blue Sea in your Eyes. 20 years later, I found him in the same place, as if he had never moved, as if time stood still, except for his “physique”. And the conversation continued where we had left it. He introduced me to Adel and Kassem. Reda, Assem and Adel, three ghosts of a forgotten world, are the pillars of my film and the interweaving of their daily lives and its narrative framework. The seasons come and go, the orchestra continues to play while Lebanon sinks, and the three men “wait” for the whole ship to wreck in a desperate indifference. No exceptional events, no key moments, the everyday in its banality, Reda, Adel and Kassem’s "routine of the disaster" borrowing the words of the Lebanese author Charif Majdalani.

Dima El-Horr

Director

Director’s Statement

Reda, Adel and Kassem, are like ghosts of a forgotten world, unable to find an anchor point in a society where history, in its insane and tragic repetition, seems to have stopped time just a few seconds away from the catastrophe. And the melancholy that inhabits them testifies the acceptance of their own defeat. Here they are, with nothing to do but to contemplate the sea. Since The Blue Sea in your Eyes, I had filmed the “tragedy” of Lebanon only through female characters, women in action, combative, inhabited by a deep desire to change the course of their destiny and acquire their “freedom” and independency from the patriarchal society. With The Beach Boys, I change angles and film the tragedy of Lebanon throughmen’s experience. In The Blue Sea in your Eyes, I had chosen to strictly film their muscular bodies on the beach which, at that time, beyond their youth and beauty, already expressed a latent despair and fatigue. In The Beach Boys, and even if AUB beach where their ritual continues to be practiced remains essential, what interests me today is also their daily life that not only tells us about “them” but also reflects the deplorable state in which a whole country is. An Arab woman filming Arab men, their weaknesses, their failures, their solitude, their eternal repetition of their daily routine, at the beach in their swim trunks or in the intimacy of their apartment, another façade of “manhood” will be revealed, a fragile and melancholic one.

Sabine Sidawi

Producer

Producer’s Note

Orjouane Productions has collaborated with Dima El-Horr since 2000 on her second short film "Pret à porter Oum Ali", her first feature film "Everyday is a Holiday" then her second documentary "Conversation with Siro" and now "The Beach Boys". The evolution of Dima's vision and camera interest me. I have been part of her projects when her stories moved around women and now for the first time I see her make a movie about Men. But her sensibility is the best key for her to go beyond the differences. The contemplation of her characters and the slow rhythm of the shots make this documentary a tender portrait of 3 invisible men to their society. Dima, thru her camera, makes Adel, Rida and Assem exist, communicate and exteriorize their emotions, their inner life and their daily presence on the Manara beach. The documentary will be filmed during a period of 9 months following the 3 characters in their daily life, their beach hobbies, their long hours in front of the Sea. We aim to start filming by October 2023 and have the film ready by September 2024. The financing will be partly from France and partly from the Middle East. We have secured almost 50% of the budget. We are collaborating with Mareterraniu, to make “The Beach Boys”.

Producer’s Filmography

Created in 2007 and managed by Sabine Sidawi, Orjouane Productions specializes in the production of feature fiction and documentary films. Orjouane Productions has produced and co-produced over 30 feature films and documentaries for Lebanese, Arab and European directors, among them “We were Communists'', “3000 Nights”, “A Maid for Each”, “Carlos” , “74 The Reconstitution of a Struggle”, “Notturno” , “Beirut Hotel”, “May in the Summer”, “The Ugly One”, “Beirut Hold'em”, “Beirut: Eye of the Storm”, “Mother Valley”. Orjouane Productions is now in production of the documentaries “Day of Wrath: Tales from Tripoli” by Rania Rafei and “The Beach Boys” by Dima el Horr and the feature film “Grey Glow” by Michele Tyan.