Interweaving fiction and reality, Phantom Beirut's striking restoration refreshes a landmark of Lebanese cinema, bringing its vivid, haunting portrait of 1980s Lebanon to a new generation.
A poem to a beloved city and its people, as scarred as its buildings.
Phantom Beirut 1998
أشباح
Ten years after faking his death during the Lebanese Civil War, Khalil returns to Beirut hoping to reclaim his identity. But when his old comrades find him, their initial disbelief gives way to suspicion as they start to question his motives and the circumstances surrounding his mysterious disappearance. As old wounds reopen and the past is reassessed, the specters of a war that never truly ended are laid bare.
Set in the late 1980s, Phantom Beirut splices its fictional narrative with interviews with the cast recounting their experiences of the conflict and its lasting impact on their lives. Interwoven with archival footage, the narrative and the testimonies paint a portrait of Beirut that serves as a time capsule as well as an exploration of the city's collective trauma and resilience. This stunning restoration breathes new life into a film that for the past two decades has been relatively obscure. Not only does it bring an important part of Lebanon's filmic canon to new audiences, the film also provides an understanding of its history from the perspective of its own people.
– Jordan Salomen