Doha Film Institute
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During a frail ceasefire that never held, a mother and her twin daughters return to Ayta, their village along the Southern Lebanese border, and to their father, who chose to stay. The documentary captures fragments of life beyond violence.
One year into the war, a Lebanese farming family, mother Khadija and her teenage twin daughters Malak and Hala, live displaced from their village of Ayta Al Shaab, a southern Lebanese border settlement metres from occupied Palestine. Though far from home, they refuse erasure through the act of remembering. The film follows an intimate conversation between mother and daughters during their present exile, and unfolds as they finally return to Ayta. Here, they reencounter their father Ali, who has always remained to protect their land and refuse to be erased. Around them, Ayta is heavily damaged: homes shattered, earth poisoned by white phosphorus, olive trees stolen, landscape scorched and drones overhead. Yet through memory, the family recreates what endures: rituals, sensory details, the landscapes and reasons that define their connection to this land. Through their stories, Super 8 imagery and visual fragments, we preserve the village as they hold it: tobacco fields, olive groves and the labour of their hands. We witness their return to the summer harvest, their earth in bloom, the fruit of their careful tending and a living partner in their endurance. This film reveals what persists inside struggle, and that as long as memory persists, the village shall not be erased.

Credits

Director
Nader Bahsoun
Screenwriter
Nader Bahsoun, Victoria Fiore
Producer
"Victoria Fiore, Claudia Chakmati , Gabriela Matarazzo "
Production Company
Zágara Films, Rhiza Films

About the Director

Nader Bahsoun
Nader Bahsoun is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker from Tyre, Lebanon. Working across photography, archival research and documentary methods, he recontextualises fragments of the past to question how memory is seen and narrated. In 2024, his project ‘Southern Birds’ was developed through the Arab Documentary Photography Programme, supported by AFAC, the Prince Claus Fund and the

Producers

Victoria Fiore