In This Land Lay Graves of Mine

Director

Countries

Year
2014

Duration
110 min

Language

Subtitles
English

Selling her land in her “Christian” village to a Muslim took the filmmaker on a journey into present-day territorial and demographic fears between Lebanon’s communities. These fears perpetuate past traumas generated by massacres and forced displacements, which were perpetrated on a sectarian basis during the civil war. Since the war ended in 1990, land transactions are completing what the war has not achieved: dismantling the country into sectarian enclaves. By intimately interweaving her own memory with the narratives of displacements of the protagonists and the country’s memory, the film reveals a dark present where an exploding landscape reflects communities’ reciprocal fears, hatred and intolerance, as the Middle East region as a whole witnesses new forced displacements of minorities.