Best Lebanese movies

Capernaum (2018)

After running away from his negligent parents, committing a violent crime and being sentenced to five years in jail, a hardened, streetwise 12-year-old Lebanese boy sues his parents in protest of the life they have given him.

The Message (1976)

In sixth-century Mecca, Prophet Muhammad receives his first revelation from God as a messenger. Three years later, he's not alone in his quest and publicly declares his prophecy. Muhammad is fought by Abu Sufian and his wife Hind, rulers of Mecca. Muhammad's followers are hunted and tortured but he continues his calling.

Caramel (2007)

In a beauty salon in Beirut the lives of five women cross paths. The beauty salon is a colorful and sensual microcosm where they share and entrust their hopes, fears and expectations.

Where Do We Go Now? (2011)

In a remote, isolated Lebanese village surrounded by land mines, Muslims and Christians live together in peace. As civil strife starts to engulf the country around them, the women in the village try, by various means and to varying success, to keep their men in the dark by sabotaging the village radio, and then destroying the village TV.

The Last of Us (2018)

N is coming from the desert to reach the north of Africa and make an illegal crossing to Europe. Alone in Tunisia, he decides to cross the solitary sea. He steals a boat and begins his journey, but it soon sinks into the water. From that moment, N embarks in a special and unique voyage: he discovers different and infinite spaces, makes intense and fleeting encounters, and meets another altered image of himself.

The Sand Castle (2024)

Stranded on a deserted island, a family of four scavenges for survival as their past unravels, sending them into a downward spiral of painful events.

Waves '98 (2015)

Disillusioned with his life in the suburbs of segregated Beirut, Omar's unusual discovery lures him into the depth of the city. Immersed into a world that is so close yet so isolated from his reality, he finds himself struggling to keep his attachments, his sense of home.

Talk to Me (2022)

Farid, who works abroad, locks himself on the last day of his stay in Beirut in his son Rawad's room, to find what he is hiding there. Separated by a locked door, the dysfunctional dynamic between them intensifies, and the past resurfaces.

Halal Love (2016)

Four tragicomic interconnected stories about how devoted Muslim men and women are trying to manage their love life and desires without breaking any religious rules.

A World Not Ours (2014)

An intimate, and often humorous, portrait of three generations of exile in the refugee camp of Ein el-Helweh, in southern Lebanon. Based on a wealth of personal recordings, family archives, and historical footage, the film is a sensitive, and illuminating study of belonging, friendship, and family in the lives of those for whom dispossession is the norm, and yearning their daily lives.

All of your Stars are but Dust on My Shoes (2021)

Kunsthal Charlottenborg and CPH:DOX present an exhibition with the French star artist Laure Prouvost, who will open the festival’s first day.

Very Big Shot (2015)

A dark comedy about brothers running a drug-dealing business out of their takeout pizzeria.

Heaven Sent (2016)

After 20 years apart, Samir a former militiaman who was presumed dead, reappears in the life of Omar, his little brother who has become a bodyguard in Beirut. Between drama and comedy, Samir has to come to terms with a country he no longer recognizes.

Al Hayba: The Movie (2022)

The murderer of Jabal’s father, is spotted alive in Bulgaria. Jabal heads a fierce hunt passing by Bulgaria and Istanbul. With the aim to bring Nazem back to justice to Al Hayba village.

The Way Home (2018)

When filmmaker Wael Kadlo picks up his mother from the airport in Beirut, it seems like a rather warm family visit. But Kadlo, who was born in Damascus in 1980, has some questions he needs to ask her.

On Fire (2016)

Samar is a beautiful girl living with her sisters. When someone tried to exploit her in some illegal activities, Samar decides to volunteer for civil defense. There, she falls in love with one of her colleagues.

The Tornado (1992)

Beirut, civil war. There are checkpoints, arbitrary executions, car bombs, machine guns, handguns, funeral processions, ambushes, hot heads, vendettas, and revenge. Cruelty and death are everywhere. Akram, who's been studying in Russia, is back in Beirut on holiday and plans to visit his mother in his home village. But can he get there? He spends time with friends in the city; they tell stories of death. Danger is on all sides. Driving down the street may lead to murder. Touches of the surreal appear: are they real, are they dreams? Can Akram survive? If so, at what cost?

Kara (2020)

A short film about my cat Kara... being Kara.

Grandma, a Thousand Times (2011)

Teta Kaabour is an 83-year old family matriarch and sharp-witted queen bee of an old Beiruti quarter. She’s been gripped as of late by the silence of her once-buzzing household where she raised children and grandchildren. Resigned to Argileh smoking and day-long coffee drinking on a now-empty balcony, Teta now invokes the deepest memories of her violinist husband who died twenty years ago. She claims a preparedness to re-unite with him.

Martyr (2018)

A young man's tragic death at Beirut's seaside causes his friends to grapple with loss and to partake in his community's rites and ceremonies, exposing the city's schisms and its society's fault lines

Bosta (2005)

After 15 years in France, Kamal returns to his native Beirut and reassembles his dance crew, striving to modernize traditional Dabke routines.

Warsha (2022)

A Syrian migrant working as a crane operator in Beirut volunteers to cover a shift on one of the most dangerous cranes, where he is able to find his freedom.

Stitching Palestine (2017)

Twelve Palestinian women sit before us and talk of their life before the Diaspora, of their memories, of their lives and of their identity. Their narratives are connected by the enduring thread of the ancient art of embroidery. Twelve resilient, determined and articulate women from disparate walks of life: lawyers, artists, housewives, activists, architects, and politicians stitch together the story of their homeland, of their dispossession, and of their unwavering determination that justice will prevail. Through their stories, the individual weaves into the collective, yet remaining distinctly personal. Twelve women, twelve life-spans, and stories from Palestine; a land whose position was fixed on the map of the world, but is now embroidered on its face.

Then Came Dark (2021)

In the Lebanese wintery wilderness, a mini-van arrives. Two men get off the van into the cold forest and set off on their quest. The tall trees and the grey sky are their witnesses. Armored with a shovel, a rope, and an axe, they soon arrive at their destination: a lonely verdant tree amid the naked forest.

It Gets Darker (2022)

Lara has not been herself lately, a fact that everyone around mentions constantly. She is dealing with a traumatic incident silently, and when Vanessa, her childhood best friend, pushes her to join in a relaxing weekend in an isolated resort, Lara reluctantly agrees. This idyllic retreat reveals its true intent when Amir arrives, Lara quickly finds out that this is a trap to silence her against speaking up about the incident with Amir. When a confrontation between Lara and Amir turns deadly, she must find her inner strength and fight her way through the night to make it out alive.

Al-Heiba: The Harvest (2020)

Dégradé (2016)

A hot summer's day in the Gaza Strip. Today the electricity is on. Christine’s beauty salon is heaving with female clients: a bride-to-be, a pregnant woman, a bitter divorcée, a devout woman and a pill-popping addict. But their day of leisure is disrupted when gunfire breaks out across the street. A gangland family has stolen the lion from Gaza’s only zoo, and Hamas has decided it’s time to settle old scores. Stuck in the salon, with the prospect of death drawing ever nearer, the women start to unravel. How will the day end? Will they lose their lives for the sake of “liberating the lion”?

Beirut Hotel (2011)

One evening, a married young singer Zoha meets the French lawyer Mathieu in a night club in Beirut. Mathieu will become suspected of spying, while Zoha is trying to flee from her husband. Despite these problems, the two will witness a love story for few days mixed with violence and fear.

Children of Shatila (1998)

Many people first became aware of the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon after the shocking and horrific Sabra-Shatila massacre that took place there in 1982. Located in Beirut's "belt of misery," the camp is home to 15,000 Palestinians and Lebanese who share a common experience of displacement, unemployment and poverty. Fifty years after the exile of their grandparents from Palestine, the children of Shatila attempt to come to terms with the reality of being refugees in a camp that has survived massacre, siege and starvation. Director Mai Masri focuses on two Palestinian children in the camp: Farah, age 11 and Issa, age 12. When these children are given video cameras, the story of the camp evolves from their personal narratives as they articulate the feelings and hopes of their generation.

Where To? (1957)

A family lives poorly in a village in the Lebanese mountain. One day the father abandons his family and leaves for Brazil, considered an Eldorado by a great number of his compatriots. Twenty years pass. The mother raised her children with great difficulty: the elder has a family and the younger one is getting ready to immigrate to Brazil. One day a ragged old man arrives to the village.