Trêve

Riad, a middle-aged man, holds a firearm shop in a neighbourhood of Beirut. When he meets up with his friends or goes hunting with them, it is often with the aim of evoking together their memories of the civil war fought in the Christian militia. These memories are covered in a nostalgia of their past youth and a tenacious bitterness towards their enemies of yesterday. Director Myriam El Hajj builds solid architectural images that interrogate—and perhaps over time even manage to articulate—the intimate origins (Riad is El Hajj’s uncle) of endemic warmongering and violence that never seems to depart. She stays on course, maintaining an untenable position and fuelling the fire of controversial issues, while she traverses the minefield of historical responsibilities.
(Mathieu Macheret)