“Full of melancholia, it is yet full of hope, the longing for a better future. Documentary cinema at its best, this is exiciting, thrilling, encouraging. Mary Jirmanus Saba has managed to deliver a very brave and mature debut film, which tells its audience a lot about the unknown history of the Middle East.”

– FIPRESCI International Critics Prize Jury Statement,

Berlinale Forum 2017

In her directorial debut, Mary Jirmanus Saba deals with a forgotten revolution, saving from oblivion bloodily suppressed strikes at Lebanese tobacco and chocolate factories. These events from the 1970s, which held the promise of a popular revolution and, with it, of women’s emancipation were erased from collective memory by the country’s civil wars. Rich in archival footage from Lebanon’s militant cinema tradition, the film reconstructs the spirit of that revolt, asking of the past how we might transform the present.