– French director Sylvie Ballyot presents a debut film that revives the time of the Lebanese civil war from the perspective of a young girl
Fida Bizri in Green Line
In competition for the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival Green Line (+see also:
Trailer
Film profile)the feature film debut of the French director, screenwriter and producer Sylvie Ballyotexplores the trauma of the countless people who experienced the hell of war and especially the civil war that divided Lebanon between 1975 and 1990 by a symbolic “green line”. Fida, a young girl who struggles with a daily life that no longer makes sense, marked by unbearable scenes of horror that burn inside us like hot coals, takes us back to this hell. Even though 40 years have passed, the writer Fida BizriCo-author of the film, has in fact not forgotten any of the feelings that accompanied her as a little girl during all those years of terror. Unable to understand or get explanations from the confused adults who did everything to protect her, today she wonders about the reasons for what happened. She is not looking for complicated answers, but an honest account of what happened.
Through numerous testimonies from people who experienced the tragedy personally – some civilians and many soldiers of all factions (allies or enemies) – the film tries to express the unspeakable and portray the unspeakable, namely the emotions experienced by the protagonists of a terrible war, especially when experienced through the eyes of a child. The direct but always respectful questions that Fida asks the former militiamen force them to confront for the first time the torment of the children who experienced the war as an incomprehensible and cruel punishment. Fida, now an adult, makes us understand how difficult it is to admit that we were wrong – because wars are, after all, nothing more than very serious mistakes.
Using a few archive images, numerous conversations with war veterans, a plasticine figure representing Fida as a child and a small model of Beirut in the 1980s, the film attempts to reconstruct its protagonist’s daily life and the fears that have long accompanied her. Listening to Fida recall the fascination she had with death as the end point of a meaningless existence is inevitably shocking. The words used by the former soldiers to try to make sense of their actions are nonetheless numerous: drug use, the fact that during the war everything seemed acceptable, that there is no longer any distinction between friend and foe, that we even get used to horror, that we look without seeing… But that is never enough. Then perhaps it is the gestures with which they absentmindedly move the figures on the model that Fida provides them, the sadness that can be read on their faces, that make us understand that no one, neither adult nor child, can really survive the horrors.
Based on Fida’s story, Green Line tells the story of all the children who, even today, suffer the consequences of decisions that are too much for them and who find themselves in the middle of a hell that adults have created to vent their senseless anger. At the same time, the film shows the potential of reviving the past through theater and cinema, not to find answers to what happened, but to reappraise feelings that have been buried for too long.
Green Line was produced by TS Productions and co-produced by Films de Force Majeure and XBO Films.
(Translated from Italian)
