In director Randa Chahal Sabbag’s ‘fairytale for troubled times,’ sixteen-year-old Lamia must cross a border between Lebanon and Israel to marry a man she has never met. Neither she nor her betrothed are eager to consummate a marriage to a stranger—a matter further complicated by Lamia’s surprising admission that she is in love with the Israeli soldier guarding the border. Sabbag’s enchanting drama about marriage and tradition is underscored by delicate symbolism and artful references to politics of Lebanon’s territories that have been annexed.
Randa Chahal Sabbag was born in Tripoli, Lebanon. She studied film at the University of Vincennes and the School of Louis Lumiére in France. She directed numerous documentaries, short films, and television programs before her first feature film, Sand Screens (1991). Her second feature film, A Civilized People (1998), a black comedy about the Lebanese Civil War, was censored in Lebanon. She refused to make edits to her film that the Ministry of Interior’s military censors proposed, which resulted in her being vilified in the press and her family receiving death threats. In 2004, she was awarded with the nation’s highest honor, a Chevalier of the Order of the Cedar, for her contributions to Lebanon. The Kite is her third feature film.
The Kite (Le Cerf-Volant)
Directed by Randa Chahal Sabbag
CAST Lamia Flavia Béchara Ziad Ziad Rahbani Amira Randa Asmar Jamilé Julia Kassar Shirine Liliane Nemry Mabrouke Renée Dick Zalfa Nayef Najy Youssef Maher Bsaibes Sami Edmond Haddad Lieutenant Tamin El Chahal Makram Assad Abou Gattas
The Kite is currently playing in theaters. Check our calendar for details!
Did you know...
• Of the approximately 20 million Lebanese people in the world, only 4 million live in Lebanon.
• More than forty cities in the United States are named "Lebanon" but almost all of them have little or no Lebanese population.
• Lebanon is often considered the center for winter sports in the Middle East. In Arabic "Lebanon" means "white," and the country is said to be named after its snow-capped mountains.
• Lebanon is the only country in the Middle East without a desert, and also the only non-dictatorial nation in the Arab world.
• The capital of Lebanon is Beirut, which has been destroyed and rebuilt seven times and is often compared to the Phoenix (the bird, not the city in Arizona).
• More than sixteen different nations and/or empires have occupied Lebanon during its four-thousand+ year history.
• Lebanon is sometimes referred to as "The Paris of the Middle East" because of its joie de vivre, laissez faire attitude and culture, and because most of its population parlent français.
• Lebanon is also called "The Switzerland of the Middle East" because of similarities between the Lebanese and Swiss banking systems.
• Lebanon’s national currency is the Lebanese pound but the U.S. dollar is widely used and available in most ATMs throughout the country.
• The largest bank robbery in world history occurred in Beirut on January 22, 1976, when guerrilla forces stole approximately $50 million from the British Bank of the Middle East.
“Born to a Lebanese father and an Iraqi mother, I have lived my entire life engulfed in conflicts. I never could escape this state of alert, this feeling of constant danger…never could escape war. With this film, I wanted to learn how to put an end to my anger.”
-Randa Chahal Sabbag, director of The Kite
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