Imagining & Resisting Through Cinema: A Selection of Films - Sarajevo Film Festival Film, Johan van der Keuken, 1993, 14'- Letter from Beirut, Jocelyn Saab, 1978, 52’

This selection, serving as a preface to the MARUF25 Urban Cinema program, presents two documentaries from different periods and geographies, highlighting the vital importance of filming under conflict while offering a keen insight into cinema’s role in difficult times. The first film takes us to a period just before the founding of the Sarajevo Film Festival, following a young artist organizing screenings for a city under fire alongside a young architecture student, one of the thousands of viewers. Against the overpowering sound of weapons in early 1990s Sarajevo, we witness a resilient instinct to survive. The program then moves to late-1970s Beirut through the lens of Lebanese documentary maker Jocelyn Saab. Saab’s film provides historical context to the city’s ongoing conflicts, offering an assessment of Beirut’s layered history and identity, and unfolds as a letter to the city’s future, a city that has inspired countless songs and films.