Denis Liakhov

A playful and personal journey through Lebanon’s audiovisual memory, composed entirely of archival footage. It is a love letter to Beirut, spanning 70 years of film, TV, home videos, and photography, exploring the Lebanese collective psyche – marked by joy and intimacy, destruction and loss. Through the eyes of citizens, filmmakers and artists, the film reconstructs a fragmented history in a country without a national archive, celebrating creative expression as both resistance, renewal and a way to preserve memory.

Vlad, a young closeted Russian homosexual, returns to his small hometown from Moscow. His brother Liokha has arranged a surprise for him: an evening in the sauna with a female prostitute.

There exists a line between resistance and satisfaction, faith and sin, pleasure and danger. These six short films explore how in all our lives, there exists the temptation to cross that line.

Last December, in full lockdown, I decided to call my mother in Russia to talk about this day, almost 5 years ago, when I came to tell her that I was ill.