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I'M NOT LAKIT

By Maria IVANOVA SURAE

Drama - Completed 2022

He has a name but has no right to a family name
He is 23 and has no passport or document
He lives in the country with 18 officially recognized religious communities but has no right to join any of them
He lives in the digital age and has no right to education.
He lives in Lebanon and he is a lakit

- Year of production
- 2022
- Genres
- Drama, Social issues, Female director
- Countries
- LEBANON, ROMANIA
- Languages
- ARABIC
- Budget
- 0.6 - 1 M$
- Duration
- 120 mn
- Director(s)
- Maria IVANOVA SURAE
- Synopsis
- Saleh lives in the house for the homeless in the mountains, not far away from the historic Lebanese city of Byblos and the world’s oldest port. He has no family name, no nationality, no passport, no religious belonging. Saleh is a lakit. According to the Islamic dictionary, lakit is an illegitimate, abandoned child. In some Middle Eastern countries children born out of wedlock, i.e. born by an unmarried woman, by law have no right to live a full life, they might as well not exist. In a country where the most important things are your family name, ancestry, religion and nationality, these people are deprived of it all through no fault of their own. They do not have a right to go to school or college, to travel, they won’t be hired for a job.
  Though Saleh is not a child anymore, he is 23, but he looks like he is 16. He can’t read or write and has difficulty speaking. Most of his life Saleh spent in the Home of Hope. This place looks and functions more like a prison. Saleh wasn’t enrolled in school because lakits are not allowed to study. The orphanage punished children by locking them in the bathroom for five days. During those five days they ate in the bathroom too. It is in the house for orphans that Saleh started eating bananas with skins. Saleh tried to run away several times, but he was caught. Also, while living in the orphanage he forgot what the sea looks like.
  Now Saleh doesn’t speak much, but he smiles a lot. Saleh says that he was born in Saida (old city 30 km away from Beirut).
  The Islamic dictionary has one more definition – a person who has accepted and given refuge to an abandoned child does a charitable, good deed (sawāb). Adoption of lakits is prohibited by law. Human rights organizations fight for the revision and abolition of the law. But the society is not yet ready for the abolition of the law on lakits, which means that for now Saleh has no future.
  ‘I’m not Lakit’ is a full-length documentary with fiction elements. An actor will play Saleh in his past life, and in the present day Saleh will act himself.
  Part of the film is fiction and will focus on his past life, his hardships, inner turmoil, rejection by society, personal tragedy, people who helped him and people who took advantage of him.
- Beginning of shooting
- May 09, 2021
- End of shooting
- Jan 31, 2022