Under the Bombs

Zeina lives in Dubai. When her marriage falls apart she sends her six-year-old son to stay for a while with her sister in southern Lebanon. Within days the war starts. Zeina forces her way back into the country and finds the only taxi willing to drive south: Tony, a Christian driver who has been thinking of leaving the country himself. Philippe Aractingi shot the film right after the thirty-four-day war of summer 2006, among the rubble, and used his own footage of the bombardment in it. Only two professional actors are in the cast; the people they meet along the road are real. Half the scenes are improvised. The film looks from inside Lebanon and does not hide that; rather than taking a side, it stays with the ordinary people left in the middle of the destruction.