19/08/2024 - French director Sylvie Ballyot presents a debut feature that revisits the Lebanese Civil War period through the eyes of a young girl

In competition for the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival, Green Line [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the debut feature by French director, screenwriter and producer Sylvie Ballyot, explores the traumas of the countless people who have lived the hell of war and more particularly of the civil war that, through a symbolic “green line”, split Liban in two between 1975 and 1990. Taking us back to this hell is Fida, a young girl grappling with a daily life that no longer makes sense, marked by unbearable scenes of horror that burn inside like hot coals. Even if, at this point, 40 years have passed, writer Fida Bizri, co-writer of the film, hasn’t in fact forgotten any of the sensations that, as just a little girl, accompanied her during all these years of terror. Not being able to understand nor obtain explanations from the confused adults who have done everything to protect her has pushed her, today, to wonder about the reasons for what happened. She’s not looking for elaborate answers, but rather a sincere expression of what happened.

Through numerous testimonies from those who have personally experienced the tragedy – some civilians and many soldiers belonging to all factions (ally or enemy) – the film strives to express the inexpressible and represent what cannot be, namely the feelings that were experienced by the protagonists of a terrifying war, especially if experienced through the eyes of a child. The questions, direct but always respectful, that Fida asks the ex-militiamen push them to face, for the first time, the anguish of children who experienced the war as an incomprehensive and cruel punishment. Fida, now an adult, makes us understand how difficult it is to admit we were wrong – for after all, wars are nothing but very serious mistakes.

Thanks to sporadic archive images, numerous discussions with those who participated in that war, a plasticine figurine representing Fida as a kid, and a small model of Beirut as it was in the 1980s, the film aims to reconstruct the daily life of its protagonist and the anxieties that have long accompanied her. Listening to Fida as she remembers the fascination that death exerted on her as the final point of a meaningless existence is inevitably shocking. The words of the ex-soldiers to try and give a meaning to their acts are nevertheless numerous: drug taking, the fact that during the war, everything seemed to become acceptable, that there is no more nuance between being a friend or an enemy, that one even gets used to horror, that we look without seeing… Yet these are never enough. Then it is perhaps the gestures, as they absentmindedly move the figures on the model that Fida makes available to them, the sadness that can be read on their faces, that makes us understand that no one, adult or child, can truly survive the horrors.

Starting from Fida’s story, Green Line talks about all the children who, still today, suffer the consequences of decisions that go beyond them, finding themselves in the middle of a hell that adults have created to vent their senseless anger. At the same time, the film highlights the potential of revisiting the past through theatre and cinema in an attempt not to find answers to what has happened, but rather to rework sensations buried for too long.

Green Line was produced by TS Productions and co-produced by Films de Force Majeure and XBO Films.

(Translated from Italian)