Where to? by Georges Nasser

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.

Festivals & Awards: Cannes Film Festival - Official Competition 1957, Cannes Film Festival - Cannes Classics 2017, Lumiere Film Festival, Cinemed

Born in Tripoli in 1927, Georges Nasser studied cinema at UCLA in Hollywood and returned to his native country with the firm determination to make films in an environment where the industry was nonexistent.
In 1957 he directed Ila Ayn? (Where to?), which became the first film to represent
Lebanon in the official competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Nasser repeated the same remarkable feature with The Little Stranger, also selected at Cannes in 1962. In 1975, Nasser shot his third film Al Matloub Rajol Wahed (It only takes one man) in Syria. Although the film’s future looked promising, the eruption of the Lebanese civil war put an end to its career.

Nasser finally found a satisfactory vocation as a teacher at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA). He educates new generations in the art of making films.
He passed away in 2019 at the age of 91.

This screening is in partnership with Nadi Lekol Nas and part of the public program of the exhibition “Alcântara: The Travels of Dom Pedro II in the Arab World in 1871 and 1876” organised by Embassy of Brazil in Beirut.

90 min | 1957
Arabic with English subtitles