A film plagued by myriad challenges, it’s almost a miracle Costa Brava, Lebanon <\/em>was completed. \u201cI think making the film became like an act of resistance.\u201d \u2014Mounia Akl, director<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cLEBANON, IN THE NEAR FUTURE,\u201d reads the opening caption of Mounia Akl\u2019s Costa Brava, Lebanon<\/em>.\u00a0The irony of the caption manifests itself almost instantly, as we hear sirens blazing in the background, disembodied voices issuing instructions through an intercom, and the rumble of a garbage truck. Slowly, the camera pans across the Port of Beirut, revealing a man with a mask, the twinkling lights of Zaitunay Bay, and the silhouette of smoldering grain silos, a living testament to the damage wreaked by the August 2020 port explosion.<\/p>\n This somber portrait is no fiction. Akl\u2019s \u201cnear-future\u201d Lebanon bears an ominous resemblance to the present, with the film\u2019s opening sequence a stark reminder of the 218<\/a> deaths caused by the Beirut blast, the largest<\/a> non-nuclear explosion in history, which wounded<\/a> 7,000 others, displaced more than 300,000 people, and destroyed half the city. In less than a minute, we learn that this film is no dystopian fantasy; the face mask in the opening shot cues us to the myriad crises affecting Lebanon today, from the Covid-19 pandemic to the country\u2019s garbage crisis and economic collapse.<\/p>\n The culprit? The film is unambiguous, illuminating the stench of corruption as it follows the story of the Badri family, who, having escaped the pollution of Beirut to the mountains, must determine whether to stay or to leave when the government decides to construct a landfill next to their idyllic hillside abode.<\/p>\n \u201cCosta Brava <\/em>was a movie that was set in 2030, but the reality of the country degraded so much that the dystopia I wrote was nicer than the reality of the country,\u201d Akl told me over coffee on the evening of the film\u2019s Beirut premiere. \u201cSo I just canceled that, and I said that it\u2019s a movie about now.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A Landscape of Crisis<\/strong><\/p>\n Costa Brava, Lebanon<\/em>, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2021, and was released on Netflix in November 2022, takes its name from Beirut\u2019s Costa Brava landfill, which the Lebanese government opened<\/a> in 2016 in an attempt to deal with a worsening garbage crisis. It is Lebanese director Akl\u2019s first feature film and was Lebanon\u2019s submission to the Academy Awards in 2022.<\/p>\n However, the film nearly didn\u2019t happen. When a large amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the Port of Beirut exploded on August 4th, 2020, killing over 200 people and ravaging the city, Akl nearly called off whole thing. At the time of the explosion, she was in her office in Gemmayze, Beirut, working on the film\u2019s pre-production with her crew. In a matter of seconds, everything changed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went from a creative meeting filled with passion and love and excitement to looking for each other under rubble, wondering if we had all made it [out] alive,\u201d Akl said in a TED Talk<\/a> last year. While everyone in the crew survived, Akl\u2019s cinematographer Joe nearly lost his eye, and many others sustained injuries as well. Walking outside on the day of the blast \u201cfelt like walking [through] the set of a movie I don\u2019t want to direct or be a part of,\u201d she recounted in her talk. \u201cHow can you even think about being creative or making anything at a moment where you feel like you\u2019re living hell?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/h4>\n
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Meera Santhanam<\/h4>\n