EXCLUSIVE: The TIFF Cinematheque will mount a large-scale retrospective of works by Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab next month as part of TIFF’s month-long International Women’s Day program.
Iranian filmmaker and visual artist Bani Khoshnoudi has programmed the Saab retrospective for TIFF. Titled More Than A Witness: The Films of Jocelyne Saab, the program will feature works such as the new 4K restoration of Saab’s debut fiction feature The Razor’s Edge (1985).
“This retrospective is also an opportunity for me to shed light on some of her lesser-known works, the shorts, but also films from Iran and Egypt, which reflect the dedication of Jocelyne Saab to complex issues and situations that tend to attract simplified accounts and narratives,” Khoshnoudi told us in a statement.
“Her voice is so missed at this incredibly trying time, as war and violence take over our region once again. I can only imagine how she would not only cringe at the polarization and lack of depth in social media’s relating of events from Palestine to Lebanon and Iran, but also how she would most definitely have involved herself in either making work or supporting others working on these urgent issues.”
Born and raised in Beirut, Saab began her career as a journalist. Hired as a journalist by her friend, the writer and visual artist Etel Adnan, she became a war reporter. In 1975, she directed her first feature film, a documentary, Lebanon in Turmoil, a portrait of the Lebanese Civil War. Saab then spent fifteen years covering the Lebanese war, during which she made almost 30 films, including Beirut, Never Again. She made her fiction debut in 1985 with The Razor’s Edge, which screened at Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. Saab died in 2019 in Paris after a long illness.
“Jocelyne was not only a filmmaker and artist, but also an important inspiration and a determined conveyor of other people’s work,” Khoshnoudi added. “She founded the Cultural Resistance International Film Festival in Beirut, not an easy feat within the political context there. This is how I met her in 2013, thanks to Nicole Brenez, who had shown her my film The Silent Majority Speaks.”
Khoshnoudi added: “I am very honoured to have been entrusted with the work, and thrilled to accompany the screenings, not least of all for one of her little-known, but essential films: Iran, Utopia in the Making, a film that surprised me by its incredibly precise and critical look at the 1979 Revolution in my country. It goes without saying that revisiting her films now and learning about Jocelyne’s contribution to essay and documentary filmmaking is essential and couldn’t be more timely.”
The retrospective will run from March 12-22. Khoshnoudi will be in person in Toronto for a series of Q&As and the Canadian premiere of her 2025 film, The Vanishing Point, which screen on March 14.
English (US) ·