Hamza Nasrallah

Patrick Perrault, a photo-journalist covering the war in Beirut in the late 1980s, is himself caught up in the hostilities when one day he is picked up and bundled into a car at gun-point. Blind-folded, he is taken to an unknown location where he discovers that he is being taken hostage by Lebanese guerrillas.

One of the most popular Lebanese films of the late 1990s, Around the Pink House is a story that explores the changing urban landscape of Beirut after the Civil War. La maison rose (the pink house) is an old mansion in Beirut where the Nawfal family found shelter during the Civil War. Unfortunately for them, their immediate environment is rapidly changing, as many of the old shell-ridden buildings are being torn down and replaced by new construction projects. When Mattar, the owner of the pink house, decides to sell it to make room for a large commercial centre, the residents of the neighbourhood become divided between the shopkeepers and businessmen in favour of a different kind of modernity.

Marie wakes up one morning in Beirut in a panic, convinced that she has lost her daughter’s wedding photograph. A photograph, however, that never existed… Ten years ago, her daughter’s marriage ceremony had to be cut short on account of a bombing raid. There was no time for a wedding photograph. Now, with the aid of a photographer and a chicken, Hoda and her husband decide to reconstruct the wedding ceremony once more, so that Hoda’s mother will at last have the photograph she deserves…

Tarek, a taxi driver delivers a passenger to an insane asylum called “L’Oisellerie” (aviary) for a brief visit. In this place of peace, whose inmates would like nothing better than their freedom, Tarek finds that leaving is not so easy.