To celebrate their twentieth birthdays, Yasmine and Leila visit Mr. Farouk, a legendary cinephile and film collector in Beirut. Through his collection, they discover a Lebanon they have never seen before, and using cinema to engage the past, Jocelyne Saab’s film reflects on Beirut’s present––in 1994––through memory and archive, fact and fiction. The two heroines immerse themselves in over forty years of international, cinematographic images of Beirut, the real star of this film. Once Upon a Time in Beirut accounts for the reality of war and its destruction of memory through the annals of celluloid history, and Yasmine and Leila take their city back by reimagining Beirut through moving pictures, providing hope to a city in the midst of another rebuilding. Honoring the strength and resilience of Beirut in the wake of numerous tragedies and hopeful uprisings, we archive a moment in this city’s past with a nod to one of Beirut’s most iconic auteurs.

About the Filmmaker

Jocelyne Saab was a filmmaker, photographer, and journalist from Beirut. Born in 1948, she became a war reporter in 1973, covering the SWANA region and Middle East politics. In 1975, she directed her first feature film, a documentary released in Parisian cinemas called Lebanon in Turmoil. She covered the Lebanese war for fifteen years, during which she directed almost thirty films that screened on television and in many international festivals. Saab passed away in France in 2019, but the Association des Amis de Jocelyne Saab, along with numerous other international organizations, are working to preserve her impressive oeuvre.