Event

I Want To See

Seattle Premiere!

(Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige, 2009, Lebanon/France, Beta-SP, 75 min)
With the current unrest in the Middle East, there's no better time for this exceptional hybrid documentary. Operating between the lines of documentary and fiction, French icon Catherine Deneuve, playing herself, asks actor Rabih Mroué, also playing himself, to show her the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon war. As the two characters drive towards the border of South Lebanon, a half-spoken complicity grows between them, revealing their anxieties around security and upon the question of whether Mroué will find his family house. Deneuve both denies and takes advantage of her status as an icon of cinema to lend a fresh glance, and to gain physical access, to a landscape whose representation has been exploited and saturated by the media. I Want To See is a reminder of the vulnerabilities laying in the wake of conflicts in the Middle East.

"A potent and intriguing cinema of ideas." The Guardian