The history of Lebanon would seem, at least to an outsider, an embodiment of the perhaps apocryphal ancient Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times.” The land that is now Lebanon been ruled by and contested among various empires and colonizers for centuries and, after becoming an independent country in the 1940s, has often been negatively affected by strife spilling over from neighboring countries as well as internal strife. At the same time, Lebanon has long been home to a lively cultural scene, including a substantial history of filmmaking.
Do You Love Me, the debut feature of Beirut-based Lana Daher, embraces both the disruption and the resilience of Lebanese history and life through a collage-like film that draws on over 20,000 archival sources, from feature films to home movies to newsreels to found footage. Explanatory title cards pop up from time to time, but they’re never on screen long enough to actually be read. So the question arises: how are you supposed to watch this film without getting a migraine?
A series of opening titles provides a clue: don’t expect a chronological presentation and embrace the concept that the resulting “disorientation is part of the journey.” Abandon preconceptions about what constitutes filmmaking and settle back and allow the images and sounds wash over you, being in every moment as it happens but not lingering so much that you miss the next one. Let the experience of watching this film be like the experience of living life, in other words, where you are not always in control, don’t always know what’s coming next, and often understand what happened only after the fact. On the other hand, after viewing Do You Love Me it’s totally reasonable to want to know the sources of the different materials used in this film (I certainly did), and they are conveniently available on a web site created for just that purpose.
The same opening title sequence also remarks that contemporary history is not taught in Lebanese schools, and one obvious interpretation of this film is that it’s an attempt to provide that history in cinematic form. But it’s certainly not an academic history with everything arranged neatly, instead more of an audio/visual experience that provides a wealth of material that each person must interpret for themselves. The title itself is also open to interpretation: who is the “you” and who is the “me” of this question? I take it to refer to the mutual relationship of the filmmaker to her native country and city: Beirut has seen a lot of trouble over the years but is also home to a rich history and culture as well as to Daher’s family, so of course she loves the city and the city loves its talented daughter right back.
Daher’s guiding hand is evident throughout: the clips have been selected and sequenced with care, with the meaning of each clip dependent in part on where it appears in sequence, and with individual clips sometimes paired with a soundtrack that contradicts the obvious interpretation of what you are seeing. I don’t know who made what creative decisions in the making of this film, but judging from the polished and evocative result, Daher, who is credited as co-screenwriter and co-producer as well as director, had expert help from co-screenwriter and editor Qutaiba Barhamji, sound director Pierre Armand, and colorist Alexis Lambotte. | Sarah Boslaugh
Do You Love Me is available for streaming on Prime Video, Apple TV, and Icarus Films on Demand, and will be available on DVD on Nov. 24 from Icarus Films. According to the Icarus web site, the DVD will include an interview with Daher from New Directors/New Films 2026.
