The artistic women of Beirut, Hend Sabri's UN exit and film galore in Lebanon
With spring in full bloom and the cultural calendar equally bursting in abundance, I'm itching to get outside this weekend.
The only problem is figuring out how to be everywhere at once. Part of me is longing to be outdoors, basking in the sun and the scent of jasmine, but at the same time, I'm finding the season's lineup of films and exhibitions just as alluring.
With the help of the following articles, I'm plotting a weekend that includes a little bit of both. I hope you manage the same.
Four female Lebanese artists to watch
Three female painters and one photographer are taking the art scene by storm this spring in Beirut. They are reimagining the Phoenician princess of Sour, fusing Lebanese and Japanese abstraction, painting nostalgic village life and capturing women at the all-too familiar crossroads — to stay or leave Lebanon?
From canvas to screen, women are also taking the spotlight at the 8th Beirut Women Film Festival, which, this year, is bigger and more encompassing than ever. Rana Najjar sat down with founder and director Sam Lahoud to understand how the event advocates for a film world committed to women.
This year's event has also brought none other than Egyptian-Tunisian actress Hend Sabri, this year's festival honoree, to town. Karl Richa caught up with the icon between screenings, red carpets and her departure from her position as U.N. ambassador.
Who needs a euro-summer when you have euro-film-spring
If the festival has opened the floodgates of your cinematic appetite, you're in luck. The European Film Festival is also kicking off this week at Beirut's Metropolis Cinema. We've got more info on the event and our top picks for your movie marathon.
For the bookworms of Beirut
It really is the season of cultural festivals! Last weekend, Yara Malka captured the literary bliss of her spring morning spent wandering around this year's Souk al-Kotob festival, guiding us through the stalls of eclectic wares infused with the smell of ground coffee and freshly printed pages.
A Thousand and One Nights like you've never seen before
To finish with a bang, the Caracalla Dance Theatre returns this month with a high-octane take on 'One Thousand and One Nights,' where classical choreography meets dabkeh, vivid silks billow on stage and the folkloric spirit of Baalbeck is brought back to life in dramatic color.
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Nahar Net
a day ago
- Nahar Net
EU rewards journalists from Palestine, Egypt and Syria in Samir Kassir Award
by Naharnet Newsdesk 04 June 2025, 11:58 The Delegation of the European Union to Lebanon and the Samir Kassir Foundation have announced the results of the 20th edition of the Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press, in a ceremony held at the Sursock Palace Gardens, in Beirut. This Award, established and funded by the European Union, is recognized internationally as a flagship prize for press freedom and the most prestigious journalism award in the Middle East, North Africa and Gulf region. Since 2006, the Award ceremony has been held annually to commemorate the anniversary of Lebanese journalist Samir Kassir's assassination on 2 June 2005 in Beirut, and celebrate his life, his values, and his memory. The Samir Kassir Award is open to professional journalists from eighteen countries of North Africa, the Middle East, and the Gulf. This year, a record 372 journalists participated in the competition, hailing from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. 125 candidates competed in the Opinion Piece category, 157 in the Investigative Article category, and 90 in the Audiovisual News Report category. The winner in each of the three categories is awarded a prize of €10,000. Each of the short-listed finalists per category receive a €1,000 prize. The winners of the 2025 Samir Kassir Award are: - Opinion Piece Category: Badar Salem, from Palestine, born in 1980, for her article titled 'On the Normalisation of Sumud in Gaza,' published in Romman Magazine on 19 July 2024. In her piece, Badar critiques the glorification of sumud (steadfastness) in Gaza, arguing that idealizing resilience imposes unrealistic expectations on Palestinians and masks the profound trauma they endure. It calls for shifting from celebrating endurance to recognizing the right to vulnerability, care, and dignity in the face of ongoing violence. - Investigative Reporting Category: Marina Milad, from Egypt, born in 1994, for her investigation titled ''I Have Become Shameful': Syrian Women Leave Prison with a "Stigma"', published in Masrawy on 25 February 2025. This report reveals that after enduring torture, rape, and dehumanization behind bars, many Syrian women emerge into a society that greets them with stigma, rejection, and renewed trauma, instead of empathy and genuine support. - Audiovisual News Reporting Category: Khalil Alashavi, from Syria, born in 1983, for his report titled 'Syria: Children in a Never-Ending War', produced by Tiny Hands and launched on 15 March 2025. The report focuses on the continued plight of Syrian children in their war-torn country, and the years of stolen innocence, which a regime change alone cannot address. Speaking at the ceremony Tuesday, the Ambassador of the European Union to Lebanon, Sandra De Waele, said: '50 courageous journalists have received the Samir Kassir Award since 2006. Journalists who, despite the risks, have used their voice to hold the powerful accountable, to expose corruption, and to give a voice to the voiceless. Yet they persist, because, like Samir, they believe that the truth matters and the public has the right to know. And this is what the Samir Kassir Award stands for. More than a recognition of excellence, it has become a platform that brings powerful stories from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf to the world, that sparks difficult but necessary conversations, and that creates a space where journalists can support one another in their mission.' Malek Mrowa, Acting President of the Samir Kassir Foundation, said: 'Over the past two decades our region has endured uprisings, revolutions, counter-revolutions, wars, and exoduses. The targets of oppression keep shifting: one year it is protesters in the street, the next it is women demanding bodily autonomy, the next it is reporters who dare to film a checkpoint. But the core struggle has never changed: the right to think freely, to speak openly, and for citizens to know what is done in their name. That struggle is embodied in every entry we receive for the Samir Kassir Award.' An independent seven-member jury from the Arab League and European Union member states selected the winners. This year's jury gathered Ali Amar (Morocco), editor-in-chief of Le Desk, Antoine Haddad (Lebanon), vice-president of the Saint George University of Beirut and the Samir Kassir Foundation's representative in the jury, Mina Al-Oraibi (Iraq), editor-in-chief at The National, Jean-Pierre Perrin (France), political writer, Paul Radu (Romania), co-founder of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Natalia Sancha (Spain), journalist, photographer, and communication expert, and Lina Sinjab (Syria), Middle East Correspondent at BBC.
Nahar Net
22-05-2025
- Nahar Net
War takes center stage as Lebanon's theaters are back
by Naharnet Newsdesk 22 May 2025, 14:26 As Lebanon suffered a war last year, Ali Chahrour was determined to keep making art, creating a performance inspired by the plight of migrant workers caught up in the conflict. Months after a ceasefire largely halted the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, Chahrour's work premiered in Beirut in early May with plans to take it to stages across Europe including at France's famed Avignon Festival. "This project was born during the war," said the 35-year-old playwright and choreographer. "I did not want to stop making theatre, because I don't know how to fight or carry weapons, I only know how to dance." On stage, two Ethiopian domestic workers and a Lebanese Ethiopian woman speak, sing and dance, telling stories of exile and mistreatment in "When I Saw the Sea", directed by Chahrour. The play pays tribute to the migrant women who were killed or displaced during the two-month war between Israel and Hezbollah which ended in November, and the year of hostilities that preceded it. Hundreds of migrant workers had sought refuge in NGO-run shelters after being abandoned by employers escaping Israeli bombardment. Others were left homeless in the streets of Beirut while Lebanon's south and east, as well as parts of the capital, were under attack. Chahrour said that "meeting with these women gave me the strength and energy to keep going" even during the war, seeking to shed light on their experience in Lebanon which is often criticized for its poor treatment of migrant workers. - 'Escape and therapy' - The war has also shaped Fatima Bazzi's latest work, "Suffocated", which was shown in Beirut in May. It was revised after the 32-year-old playwright was displaced from her home in Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold heavily bombarded during the war. The play originally portrayed a woman dealing with her misogynistic husband, and was reshaped by Bazzi's own experience, forced to escape to Iraq until the ceasefire was finally reached. Determined to continue the project the moment she returned to Lebanon, Bazzi had kept in contact with the cast in video calls. "We took advantage of this in the performance, the idea of separation and distance from each other, how we worked to continue the play," she told AFP during a recent rehearsal. At one point in the play, the characters are suddenly interrupted by the sound of a bomb and rush to their phones to see what was hit this time, with their reactions becoming scenes of their own. To Bazzi, working on the play has allowed her and the cast to "express the things we felt and went through, serving as an escape and therapy". - 'Children of war' - Theater stages across Lebanon did not lift their curtains during the war, and though they are now back, the local scene is still burdened by the effects of a devastating economic crisis since 2019. "We postponed an entire festival at the end of last year due to the war," said Omar Abi Azar, 41, founder of the Zoukak collective. The group runs the theater where Bazzi's latest piece was performed. "Now we have started to pick up the pace" again, said Abi Azar, whose own play was postponed by the war. "Stop Calling Beirut", which Abi Azar created with his collective, tells the story of the loss of his brother more than a decade ago and their childhood memories during Lebanon's civil war, which ended in 1990. Zoukak itself was born out of a crisis during a previous war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006. "We are children of war. We were born, raised and grew up in the heart of these crises," said Abi Azar. To him, "this is not a challenge, but rather our reality". "If this reality wanted to pull us down, it would have dragged us, buried us and killed us a long time ago," he added, seeking hope in art.
L'Orient-Le Jour
10-05-2025
- L'Orient-Le Jour
Sex, jazz and tacos
I hope you are enjoying the first week of May, objectively the best month of the year, not just because it's my birthday month. Everything feels a little lighter to me all of a sudden. The sun is warmer, janarik are in season and I'm deep in the joyful chaos of planning a summer trip with my friends. Happily, this week's picks are a total reflection of that mood – lighter stories, good food and even a hint of future promise. Enjoy! Is romanticism dead? The three artists whose works are now showing at the Janine Rubiez Gallery gave us their hot takes on the artistic movement. But how do their pastoral paintings of Lebanon square with their critique of romanticism as a relic of colonial fantasy? What's it like to be Lebanon's first sexologist? Sandrine Atallah went from being told that 'kissing leads to hell' to becoming a household name as a sexologist in a country where talking about sex is taboo. Raphael Abdelnour sat down with her to ask some juicy questions you might be secretly curious about. I've watched The Devil Wears Prada enough times to know that the fashion industry is a cut-throat world. But Sam Rawadi has climbed the ranks from small-town dreamer in the hills of Bikfaya (Metn) to having his photographs grace the covers of Vogue and Elle Arabia. What does he dream of achieving next? The sounds of Jazz Week ring on One of the joys of watching a jazz band is observing how each player interacts and slots into the careful dance of call and response. In Jim Quilty's write-up of the Makram Aboul Hosn Octet, his attention to each of the eight players brings the whole performance to life, to the point where you can almost hear it. Lebanon's journalists of tomorrow What does cultural preservation look like through the eyes of Lebanese university students? We got to hear from them directly as part of the AUB Outlook x L'Orient Today writing competition. I found the winning submissions impressively sensitive and beautifully written. Some food for all that thought And finally, Jaimee Lee Haddad is back with more delicious globe-trotting recipes, which I can personally vouch for! This week, she serves us a Lebanese-Mexican crossover — two food-haven heavyweights — for those of you feeling homesick, hungry or perhaps just adventurous.
