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EVERY DAY IS A HOLIDAY

CHAQUE JOUR EST UNE FETE

By Dima EL-HORR

CINÉ-SUD PROMOTION - as PROD

Black comedy - Completed 2009

Beirut, Lebanon. On the same day, three women who do not know each other are on the same bus headed for the same place: the Prison of men located in the heart of the Hermel desert. In one day, an initiatic travel for everybody...

- Year of production
- 2009
- Genres
- Black comedy
- Countries
- LEBANON, FRANCE, GERMANY
- Languages
- FRENCH, ARABIC
- Budget
- 1 - 3 M$
- Duration
- 85 mn
- Director(s)
- Dima EL-HORR
- Writer(s)
- Dima EL-HORR, Rabih MROUÉ, Ghassan SALHAB (CONSULTANT)
- Cast
- Hiam ABBASS, Manal KHADER, Raïa HAIDAR
- ISAN
- 0000-0002-6D3E-0000-C-0000-0000-1
- EIDR
- 10.5240/90C4-3AED-4D9E-9772-6D8F-A
- Producer(s)
- Thierry LENOUVEL (Ciné-Sud Promotion), Sabine SIDAWI (Orjouane Films), Hanneke VAN DER TAS (Nikovantastic Film), Nicole GEHRARDS (Nikovantastic Film)
- Synopsis
- Beirut, Lebanon. On the same day, three women who do not know each other are on the same bus headed for the same place: the Prison of men located in the heart of the Hermel desert. Tamara is going to the prison against her parent’s wishes, to visit her husband who was incarcerated on their wedding day. Lina only has one goal in mind : to get her husband, who was sentenced to a long stretch, to sign the divorce papers which will finally set her free. Hala travels with a secret knot of fear in her stomach: hidden in her suitcase, she carries the weapon forgotten by her husband, a prison guard.
  The path that leads to the prison seems clear enough in the beginning, a straight road with an uncomplicated itinerary: setting off at the bus station in Beirut and terminating at Mermel Prison at the heart of the remote Hermel desert. But one incident changes the tone and sets everything adrift. The women, against their intentions, are left to their fates and find themselves lost in the middle of nowhere. The arid landscape stretches out as far as the eye can see – punctuated with stagnant pools afloat with corpses. The women cross the paths of fugitives’ convoys.
  Long silences resonate in these empty spaces that emanate tension. The women continue along their road, plunging deeper into what proves to be an internal journey, where personal and collective memory can no longer be distinguished one from the other, where the recent history of the country takes shape from the void of amnesia and comes alive before their eyes, where the dormant past transforms into an absurd present. Are these their dreams, their fantasies, or their own realities?
  In the manner of this country seeking to reclaim its own freedom and searching for a sovereignty both inexistent and ridiculed, in the manner of this Lebanon laboring under the illusion of its imaginary victories, where the land still gives off the smell of violence and death from a badly buried civil war, the voyage of these three women becomes no less than a quest for their own independence.
- Partners & financing
- CNC, CineCinema, Medienboard berlin, World Cinema Fund, Visons Sud Est, Organisation Intergouvernementale de la Francophonie, Ezef/EED... already attached.
  Presales and 10% coproduction required.
- Production schedule
- Shooting in September.
  First print May 2009.
- Beginning of shooting
- Sep 01, 2008