Skies of Lebanon

Filmmaker Chloé Mazlo & her co-writer Yacine Badday came to Le Groupe Ouest to develop this feature film as part of the Annual Selection. They were then selected for LA SÉLECTION Talents, an event co-created by Groupe Ouest & the Gan Foundation for Cinema. The film was selected for Critics’ Week in Cannes 2020.

In April 2016, the co-writers arrived at Le Groupe Ouest with a project to adapt a novel and after a few days of immersion with the group and the scriptwriter-consultants, “everything fell apart”, says Yacine Badday. “At Le Groupe Ouest, we realised the richness of Chloé’s family heritage, worthy of a novel, [a Swiss grandmother who went to live in Lebanon as a nurse in the 1950s and fell head over heals in love with the country, then with the director’s grandfather]. We realised there was potential for a film stronger than we’d thought. The first Raconte-moi (Tell Me) session revealed a clearer, more emotionally account, more natural and obvious, even if it was initially painful to accept. We arrived with one film project and left with another… what survived that first session of working together was our collaboration and, our desire to talk about Lebanon and the war.”

In this first feature film, Chloé Mazlo, César for the best animated short film “Les Petits cailloux” 2015, skillfully mixes studio shooting and stop motion (frame by frame animation). “In our individual sessions with the script-consultants, rapidly we decided to disregard technique at this early stage of development. We focused on the characters, the story, the aesthetics… It was at a later stage that we took technique into account,” says Yacine Badday. Chloé Mazlo adds: “I decided to use it only when necessary (the melting heart, the stork hunt…), as a special effect but never systematically. I hope that this variety of techniques and its artisanal aspect contribute to the enjoyment of this film. I think it also makes the couple, Alice and Joseph, all the more endearing, it adds to their fantasy.”

In casting the couple Chloé chose the excellent : Alba Rohrwacher & Wajdi Mouawad. “I was looking for both charismatic and gentle actors, who say a lot without words. It was an obvious choice for Alba Rohrwacher, a heartfelt choice. […] For Wajdi Mouawad it was more of an “intellectual” choice: his plays and books have been a reference for me for many years, making me grow up, shedding light on my origins, and calming me. So, in a way, he was already part of my family from an ‘artistic’ point of view,” explains Chloé Mazlo.

Synopsis

In the fifties, young Alice leaves her natal Swiss mountains for the sunny and vibrant shores of Beirut. She falls madly in love with Joseph, a quirky astrophysicist intent on sending the first Lebanese national into space. Alice quickly fits in among his relatives, but after years of bliss, the civil war threatens their Garden of Eden.