Lebanon’s Oscar® 2019 Entry for the Best International Feature ‘1982’
Additional Screenings before the voting closes for AMPAS…scroll to bottom of this interview with director Oualid Mouaness, a Sundance Screenwriting Fellow who grew up between Lebanon and Liberia. for “A particularly fond look at a boy who is in love for the first time opens our eyes to see how affairs of the heart take precedence over all other events.”
This Official Submission for the Best International Feature Film Academy Award® had its U.S. premiere at the Asian World Film Festival where it won the Audience Award. It also won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize at El Gouna Film Festival. Its world premiere at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival garnered the NETPAC Award, the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema, a worldwide organization of 29 member countries, created as the result of a conference on Asian cinema organized in New Delhi in 1990 with the support of UNESCO, Paris.
The film, which stars Lebanese actress and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Nadine Labaki, revolves around a boy who is anxious about winning over a school crush.
On the last day of school exams, the 1982 invasion of Lebanon disrupts normal school operations. Eleven-year-old Wissam is determined to tell his classmate Joanna that he loves her, while his teachers — on different sides of the political divide — try to mask their fears and deal with their own issues of family and love under the duress of impending Israeli bombardment and dogfights between Israel and Syria whose planes are shooting each other in the sky above Lebanon. Wissam’s determination grows as it becomes clear to him that no one knows what tomorrow will bring. This story of first love portrays a day the kids will never forget.
As children and parents watch the planes shoot each other, Wissam’s best friend asks his mother, “Who’s on our side?”. Her response, “No one”, sums up the outcome of any and all wars.
Today, almost 420 million children live in war zones. That proximity to violence put over 24,000 kids in harm’s way last year. We in the USA can fear every day of school as we see shooters murdering classmates all too often. This scene in which parents are rushing to the school to find their children, other children are being herded to their buses to take them home — some to East Beirut and others to West Beirut, and teachers and school administrators struggle to keep some semblance of order and to watch over the children whose parents have not yet been able to get through to the school could happen anywhere for any type of emergency on any day.
This film puts a microscopic focus on a middle-class school and brings us to empathize with people like us who are suddenly confronted by destruction. Throughout it all, family and ties of love dominate the thoughts of people whose existence is being threatened.
View an excerpt from the film here.
The director Oualid Mouaness, a Sundance Screenwriting Fellow, grew up between Lebanon and Liberia. He received an MFA in Writing and Directing from Florida State University in 1997.
As a producer, he has worked on fiction features, music videos, commercials and documentaries; most notably Rize (Sundance/Tribeca 2005). Kitchen Privileges, the first independent film that he edited and co-produced, premiered at SXSW in 2000. Oualid’s work has been nominated for numerous awards. In 2012 his projects with Drake, Rihanna, Lana Del Rey and Taylor Swift were nominated at the VMA’s, MVPA’s and the CMA’s. Mouaness has directed several short films including Saint In The Sun, which screened at the New York Independent International Film Festival in 2002 and the Academy Award shortlisted short film, The Rifle, the Jackal, the Wolf, and the Boy (2016). He is also the producer of Max Richter’s Sleep (2019) which will premiere at IDFA this month in Amsterdam.
How old were you in 1982?
I was ten. In the film, I am a combination of both Wissam and his friend Majid, played by Ghassan Maalouf, though the latter is closer to me in that I did get into some serious trouble for writing a note to a girl which said “I want to make love to you”. That was grounds for my mother being called to the school and me getting chastised for falling in love too early.
What inspired you to make this film?
I wanted to make a film about us as Lebanese and the reality of those of us who really did not ever want the war but found ourselves in it. I felt a need to address a seminal moment in Lebanese history from a human perspective, and from a place of discovery. I was 10 when this invasion happened and it marked me. It had to be addressed. I had to find a way to express my memory of that life altering day.
I opted to tell the story through Wissam’s eyes because a child’s view of conflict was true to my experience of that war. For me it is necessary to express our history, so I set out to make this film from the point of view I was most grounded in, my ten year old experience of it.
When you start, you have to keep going. It wasn’t easy. It took eight years of working on it including raising money, some of which came from the Doha Film Institute before I got it onto the screen.
What did it mean to be from West Beirut as opposed to East Beirut?
The east and west are roughly divided politically by left and right, but also are loosely Christian and Muslim. Yasmine, played by Nadine Labaki, and another teacher, Joseph, played by Rodrigue Sleiman, reflect the schism I saw among adults in the days after the invasion, as people were divided by the politics of the situation. At the time, I observed and overheard these contradictions but did not fully understand them. The story jumps between innocent childhood yearnings and adult worries about looming threats, heightened by the suggestion Yasmine’s brother has joined one side of the fight. Meanwhile, the teachers try to keep the day as normal as possible to avoid panicking their pupils, insisting they continue to complete their exams until the adults can find a way to get them home.
How did you get Nadine Lebakie to star?
We had met in 2009. It wasn’t until late 2013 when I had a draft I felt was ready that I shared it with her. One of the executive producers on the film was close with Nadine, and she helped with this. I knew I wanted her for the role after examining much of her previous work as an actor. Nadine has a presence. She’s an old soul and she brings that to the screen almost effortlessly and she carries herself so well in this film. There is something about her eyes and her presence and bearing. You know this character comes with a history and I feel that’s what this character needed.
That resonated with Labaki, who recalled having to leave school, the panic of finding the right bus to take her home and losing contact with her sister in the chaos. “That was one of the reasons why I wanted to be in that film and play that teacher, because I understood it very well, I understood her,” she says. “What happened during that day in the film is something that is on the mind of each and every one of us who grew up during the war in Lebanon.”
Labaki drew on her experience as a mother to a son, 12, and a daughter, 3, to help bring maternal elements to Yasmine’s character.
She worked on the film while taking a brief break from editing her drama Capernaum, which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars last year. But a break for her isn’t exactly time off.
How did you cast the children?
It took a long time to cast the kids and particularly finding Wissam. The process started with us casting a wide net across many school and institutions in Lebanon. We saw about 700 kids auditioning informally for the roles. There was a rigorous process to build the classroom and the friendships necessary for the classroom. Dalli and Maalouf were chosen. They are both natural actors.
How long had that war been going on?
Since 1975.
What is the current state of affairs in Lebanon?
Protests have been taking place in the streets since October. Banks, schools and universities remain shut as a cross-section of society calls for the compete removal of the corrupt kleptocratic government which has pocketed the billions of dollars given to the country to help settle refugees from Syria and Palestine and has consistenly raised taxes for its citizens, and has exploited Lebanon’s resources, and really destroyed the country on all levels.
Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets across Lebanon putting aside their religious differences or political affiliations to demand an end to government corruption, inequality and sectarianism. This is the first time in our history, that you have a generation that is putting the archaic tribal and sectarian allegiances behind.
There have been demonstrations from the northern and traditionally conservative city of Tripoli, through the capital Beirut and all the way to the southern city of Tyre. Sadly there are factions that want to maintain this cronyism and these allegiances. Though they are a minority, they hold enough sway to create a reason for the current corrupt political, judicial, and legislative to resist. So it is getting tense. Lebanon’s government of thieves needs to be completely disbanded. Not an easy feat. But a necessary one. So far, it is a strong, determined and peaceful revolution.
The ruling class of Lebanon has not changed since the country’s civil war ended 30 years ago, even before that. A few faces may have changed (though not much), but the dynasties and cliques have not. The same people and families who started the war are still in power due to tribalism and sectarianism. It is time for egalitarianism and the youth of Lebanon to take their country back.
Lebanese politics is structured according to religion. We have what is often referred to as a confessional democracy. According to the constitution, the president must be a Christian, the prime minister must be a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of the parliament must be a Shia Muslim.
Your film, in spite of dealing with war is especially poetic, not just because its ultimate message is one of love, but with Wissam’s love of drawing a super-hero who will prevail and with the ever-present pigeons, cooing, and in the end, entering the empty halls of the school.
Wissam comments early in the film on the unusual presence of the pigeons. What was that about?
Animals often sense things before humans do, and they sort of presage the coming war. Animals tend to get the brunt of our abuse of life and nature. They are the ones that don’t speak but tell a lot: about the earth, about our air, and ultimately mirror us in some way. I tend to gravitate to animals in my work. Lebanon is filled with homing pigeons and perhaps those were homing pigeons. Wissam sees that they had been displaced already by bombing and were seeking another rooftop to home at. We don’t express this in literal terms in the film, but we sense it. The school is a relatively safe and peaceful place to seek out as home.
In this film, what happens when the school has to be emptied? What happens when our skies are no longer safe? Where else would the pigeons go? What happens to the exams that were never corrected?
I got word that I passed that year, but there was no report card that I can recall.
ADDITIONAL VIEWING BEFORE VOTING CLOSES:
TCL Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood -
Thursday Dec. 5 @ 12:30pm
Friday Dec. 6 @ 12pm
Saturday Dec. 7 @ 12pm
Sunday Dec. 8 @ 12pm
Monday Dec. 9 @12:10pm
TICKETS & INFO @
https://www.fandango.com/1982-2019-221564/movie-overview
(AMPAS, DGA & HFPA MEMBERS + 1 GUEST — USE YOUR CARD FOR ENTRY)
Drama, 2019, 100 minutes, Arabic/ English
A coproduction of Lebanon / USA / Qatar / Norway
Director/ Writer: Oualid Mouaness
Producer(s): Alix Madigan, Georges Schoucair, Myriam Sassine, Chris Tricarico, Oualid Mouaness
Cinematographer: Brian Rigney Hubbard
Editor: Jad Dani Ali Hassan, Sabine El Gemayel
Sound: Rana Eid, Juan Campos
Music: Nadim Mishlawi
Principal Cast: Nadine Labaki, Mohamad Dalli, Rodrigue Sleiman, Aliya Khalidi, Ghassan Maalouf, Gia Madi, Lelya Harkous, Zeina Saab De Melero, Said Serhan, Joseph Azoury
