Merely a Smell

Directed by Maher Abi Samra

In four long takes, like a haiku in black and white, we enter the rubble of a country following the 2006 Israeli-Lebanese conflict. Without ever looking death in the face, the absence of life shows itself over the course of clues appearing in the no man’s land of a battered Beirut. In silent, frozen time, the film subtly refers to the spectator’s imagination in alluding to death.