Lara Karam Chekerdjian

In a remote, isolated Lebanese village surrounded by land mines, Muslims and Christians live together in peace. As civil strife starts to engulf the country around them, the women in the village try, by various means and to varying success, to keep their men in the dark by sabotaging the village radio, and then destroying the village TV.

Maia, a single mother, lives in Montreal with her teenage daughter, Alex. On Christmas Eve, they receive an unexpected delivery: notebooks, tapes, and photos Maia, from 13 to 18 years old, sent from Beirut to her best friend who left for Paris to escape the civil war. Maia refuses to open the box or confront its memories, but Alex secretly begins diving into it. Between fantasy and reality, Alex enters the world of her mother’s tumultuous, passionate adolescence during the Lebanese civil war, unlocking mysteries of a hidden past.

In a war-torn Middle Eastern city where music has been banned by Islamic extremists, Karim, a brilliant musician, struggles to rebuild his destroyed piano while trying to escape to Europe.

Karim, in his forties, who has lived in France since his teenage years, returns to Lebanon to transfer the remains of his father, who died during the war, from Beirut to his native village.