About four weeks ago, I wrote about a very promising short movie by Lebanese director Ely Dagher which was nominated for Best Short Movie at this year’s Cannes Festival (link).
The short film is an attempt by Ely Dagher to come to terms with living and growing up in Beirut, while working out of Belgium: the movie is about his adolescence years as a Lebanese lost in his own capital. As I said before, the trailer made it seem extremely promising: it was unlike any Lebanese movie or short film I had seen before, and I had high hopes.
Well, Cannes agrees with me.
Ely Dagher just became the first Lebanese to win a major award at Cannes. By having his movie win, Ely Dagher beat out seven other nominees from seven other countries that probably cared less about their production than the Lebanese government ever did.
By being nominated in the first place, Ely Dagher beat out 4550 other short films that were submitted from all across the world. And today, I feel proud and I suppose so should you.
Let Ely Dagher’s win be a testament to Lebanese talents everywhere who can make it big, like he did, when given the chance, the funds, the backing, when they are allowed to pursue their vision beyond the confines of a Lebanese society that is so comfortable in what it knows that it never ventures out of its comfort zone, a society that squashes its own arts as forever cliches and doesn’t let its own artists truly express what they can do in fear of not being commercial enough.
I congratulate Ely Dagher for winning. Here’s hoping Waves ’98 makes it big at next year’s Oscars as well. Hopefully it’ll become the first Lebanese production to win that golden statuette as well.
A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares 
“Ely Dagher just became the first Lebanese to win a major award at Cannes.”
Actually, Maroun Baghdadi’s “Out of Life” shared the Jury Prize with Lars Von Trier’s “Europa” in 1991.
LikeLike
Sharing the jury prize is different than winning a Palme D’Or.
LikeLike
Not really. The Jury Prize is a different category and is the third major prize in the festival and in that year, the two aforementioned directors each received an award in it.
“35 mm from Beirut” included this in their article on Dagher published a couple of weeks ago: http://35mmfrombeirut.com/relevant/waves98-trailer-ely-dagher-cannes-film-fesitval-palme-dor/
LikeLike
I mentioned that in my own post about Ely’s nomination. But as I said, the Jury Prize is not a Palme D’Or, and Ely is the first Lebanese to win that.
LikeLike
A Lebanese movie won the year there was a Lebanese in the jury…. intresting coincidence
LikeLike
Nadine Labaki was not in this jury. 🙂
LikeLike
Well joanna hadjithomas was the last one to talk because she didn’t want her nationality to compromise anything. And they unanimously voted for his film!
LikeLike
Regardless of the price and its category, the trailer is indeed a piece to look forward to. Any ideas on how to get our hands on the short film and actually watch it?
LikeLike
Who is ready to bet that our retarded censorship guys will ban the film from being distributed in Lebanon, following the dummy request of one of our retarded religious authorities?
LikeLike
It was one out of nine films not eight 🙂
LikeLike