Best Experimental Film
state-theatre #5 BEIRUT

Daniel Kötter & Constanze Fischbeck
2014, Germany, Lebanon, 65’

The architecture of Beirut Downtown represents a segregated society with no commonly shared public space: Civil War Ruins besides unused theaters and cinemas, reconstructions besides wasteland, designer shops next to vacancy, military barriers next to religious buildings. And at the heart of all this, the “Martyrs’ Square” as allegorical space, an impossible National Theatre for Lebanon. Six Beirutis accompany the camera on its one-hour walk through downtown Beirut and declare the space in-between the built environment, in-between the transformed and the demolished, their very personal theatrical stage.

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