MAD World has acquired global rights to Sylvie Ballyot‘s Lebanon Civil War documentary feature “Green Line,” which will be competing for the Golden Leopard in the main competition of the Locarno Film Festival.
“Green Line,” co-written by Ballyot and Fida Bizri, uses miniature sets of Beirut and figurines to reconstruct Bizri’s turbulent upbringing during the Lebanese Civil War, which took place between 1975 and 1990. With the help of these models, Bizri confronts the ex-militiamen who operated during her 1980s childhood in West Beirut — the same militiamen who claimed to protect her but who actually frightened her so much.
She then embarks on meeting those who operated in East Beirut, and who scared her just as much, being on the enemy side. These judgement-free encounters on both sides open the door for a universal vision of war.
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Ballyot and producer Céline Loiseau said: “Children raised amidst a war often find it hard to cope with the past, which often affects their future. It’s only when they look back with the intention of accepting the inevitability of their tragedy and putting it to rest that they can truly shake off what’s holding them back from pursuing happier lives. ‘Green Line’ is our attempt at that and at nuancing, with personal stories, our understanding of a conflict that still makes headlines generically portraying people either as survivors or as casualties or as fighters on a chessboard where world powers compete.”
In Arabic-speaking territories, “Green Line” will be released through MAD Distribution. Both MAD World and MAD Distribution are subsidiaries of the Cairo-based independent studio MAD Solutions, the world’s leading distributor of Arab films.
MAD Solutions’ co-founders Alaa Karkouti and Maher Diab said: “One of our aims as a company is to illuminate Arab stories in ways that open new eyes. Sylvie Ballyot and Fida Bizri’s unique story is a highly personal exploration of collective history that is both informative and heart-wrenching.”
MAD World co-president Colin Brown added: “As we have seen with last year’s Oscar-shortlisted Morocco documentary ‘The Mother of All Lies‘ and the 2005 Oscar-nominated animated feature ‘Persepolis,’ recent history and personal memories can be re-examined without relying solely on archival footage and talking heads. ‘Green Line’ is another remarkable example of resourceful non-fiction storytelling, a film that tries to find answers to long-buried questions.”
The film is a French-Lebanese co-production between Loiseau’s TS Productions (Paris), Jean-Laurent Csinidis’ Films du Force Majeure (Marseille), Luc Camilli’s Xbox Films (Toulouse), and Sabine Sidawi’s Orjouane Productions (Lebanon).
The film received funding from numerous support entities including France’s CNC, Région Normandie, Région Occitanie, Région Sud, Région Ile-de-France, and Qatar’s Doha Film Institute.
In addition to directing and co-writing “Green Line,” Ballyot also lensed the film, alongside Béatrice Kordon, co-edited the film along with Charlotte Tourrès, and also composed the music, along with Luc Meilland.
A graduate of the Fémis film school in Paris, Ballyot directed several shorts and medium-length fiction films that explore love and family relationships, always focusing on the boundary between the intimate and the collective, including 2002’s “Alice,” “Tel Père Telle Fille,” selected for the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight in 2007, and 2012’s “Moi Tout Seul.” She also directed the 2008 documentary “Love and Words,” which was shot in Yemen.
