70 minutes | Lebanon | 2025
Twenty years ago, I came to a public beach in Beirut to film, a woman observing a world of men. Among them was Réda, his body gleaming in the sun. I started filming him and others. Two decades later, I return to the same spot. To my astonishment, Réda is still there, as if time itself had not moved, only his face marked by wrinkles, his body by age. I begin filming him again, and his two friends, Qassem and Adel. By the sea, I film three men adrift, three aging and fatigued bodies, silent witnesses to a country collapsing under the weight of wars, social despair, and economic crisis.Expecting no miracle, they wait by the sea with the same quiet fatalism that shapes their lives. Their waiting becomes mine, in a space suspended between sleep and wakefulness, between dreams and reality, between past and present.
Director Biography - Dima Adib El-Horr
Dima El-Horr’s work explores themes of identity and the impact of war on personal and collective memory.
Her filmography, multiple awards, includes two feature films, Every Day is a Holiday (fiction) and Zeinab Al’Moto (documentary) as well as several shorts.
Her films have been screened at numerous international festivals and museums such as:
TIFF, Visions du Réel, Dok Leipzig, IFFR Rotterdam, RIDM Montreal, MoMA’s New Directors/New Films, Clermont-Ferrand, Hong Kong, Rome, Ann Arbor, São Paulo, Chicago…
And collectively screened at the Bienale de Palermo Manifesta, Tate Museum, Sursock Museum, Eye Museum Amsterdam, and Festival d’Automne/Images du Moyen-Orient.
Dima holds an MFA in Film from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Film Studies from Université Paris-Est.
For seven years, she taught cinema at the Lebanese American University.