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MIGUEL'S WAR

By Eliane RAHEB

Documentary - Completed 2021

For 37 years, Miguel has been living as an exiled gay in Spain and has become a successful interpreter. In his quest of finding some emotional balance, he decides to return to Lebanon and confront the ghosts of his past.

Festivals
& Awards

Berlinale - EFM 2021

Panorama Section - Teddy Award for Best Feature Lenght Film

- Year of production
- 2021
- Genres
- Documentary
- Countries
- LEBANON, SPAIN, GERMANY
- Languages
- ARABIC, SPANISH, GERMAN, FRENCH
- Duration
- 128 mn
- Director(s)
- Eliane RAHEB
- Cast
- Miguel JELELATY
- Producer(s)
- Eliane RAHEB (ITAR PRODUCTIONS), Lissi MUSCHOL (Kabinett Filmproduktion)
- Synopsis
- MIGUEL'S WAR is the story of a gay man who grew up oppressed and shamed during the Lebanese civil war. Raised by a conservative Catholic father and an authoritarian Syrian mother, teenage Miguel was inhibited by a deep inferiority complex and was incapable of asserting himself. In 1983 the deeply sensitive boy, desperate to prove he "exists" and can act like “a real man” joined the fighting as part of an armed faction. But his experience was a failure. Traumatized he immigrates to Madrid, Spain.
  
  In post-Franco Madrid, Miguel seeks to liberate himself through debauchery. A string of destructive relationships lead him to a failed suicide. Trying to pull himself together, Miguel becomes a conference interpreter in Barcelona. Only then, thirty-seven years after leaving Lebanon, Miguel feels ready to face his trauma and the ghosts of his past, and hopes to regain his emotional balance and maybe even find love.
  
  Using intertwining cinematic forms, melding documentary, animation, theater and archive and filmed on location in Lebanon and Spain, this feature film hopes to offer an experience of self-confrontation, awareness and catharsis.

MIGUEL'S WAR

Festivals& Awards

Festivals
& Awards