Falling From Earth

Youssef, an old man, is the only inhabitant of a building in Beirut that’s been shot to pieces. In the rubble around him, he looks for photos of happy people. On the wall of his ‘living room’, he makes a large collage of laughing faces. Each photograph however hides the fears, the memories and the reality of a city at war.
Falling from Earth tells four stories of lonely people who try to survive their own wars in Beirut. The stories all have their own place and time, but are collected like a collage of War impressions, just like the photographs on Youssef’s wall.
In the chapter about 1958, a little girl lives in a protected world of toys, but with her camera she captures the reality outside. The chapter about 1975 shows a security official who is looking for contact through the graffiti and text scrawled on the walls of a public toilet. In 1982, a woman waits in vain for her missing lover and in the present we follow Youssef. Youssef is primarily waiting… waiting for Beirut.
Debutant Zeneddine Chadi approaches the stories of his characters from a surrealist angle. There was a good reason for making the working title of the film at first Ceci n’est pas un film, as an homage to Magritte. The acute camerawork and cutting reveal a new and original voice from Lebanon.