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UNDER THE BOMBS RECEIVES STANDING OVATION
04/09/2007
That Venice audiences are a serious bunch was proven when director Giuliana Gamba, who presented the film, accidentally gave away too much of the plot of Under the Bombs (Sous les bombes) by Philippe Aractingiand was immediately booed, which was remedied, however, by the ten-minute standing ovation the film received after its screening.
A powerful story about a Shiite woman’s search for her son and sister through Lebanon under the bombs of July 2006, accompanied by a Christian taxi driver who initially only helps her for the money but eventually becomes emotionally attached to her, Aractingi conceived the film just days after the attacks began and wrote it co-screenwriter Michel Léviant and lead actors Mada Abou Farhat and Georges Khabbaz as they shot, improvising around and incorporating real-life events and people.
The film’s documentary approach and feel come from Aractingi’s extensive experience as a documentary filmmaker, and is a marked departure from his previous, debut feature, the musical film Bosta, one of Lebanon’s biggest ever box office sensations.
The director was moved by the audience’s reaction and immediately thanked not only his actors, but the producers behind the picture as well, “who understood the urgency of the situation and without whose rapid, spontaneous support it would have been impossible to make this film.” Aractingi furthermore refused to take sides in portraying the war, which he knows will provoke strong reactions among domestic audiences when the film is released in Lebanon.
Yet this is precisely where the film’s strength lies, and the filmmaker’s choice to use real settings and situations as they were unfolding was imperative to giving a voice and face to “the innocents that suffer most from the horror and devastation of any war.”
Considered the “Lebanese Roberto Benigni” and sublime in his first dramatic role, Khabbaz said he was proud “to have been entrusted with such a complicated character and to have participated in a film that carries a message of humanity that shows that war is not a Playstation game.” Abou Farhat, equally flawless in her performance, agreed, and like Khabbaz dedicated the film to Lebanon, adding that it was important for her to convey “the anger and sadness I feel over what has happened in my country.”
Natasha Senjanovic
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