The Upper Gate

Directed by Arab Loutfi

The Upper Gate was about Sidon (The capital of the south of Lebanon), the filmmaker Arab Loutfi’s home town; in which she wove a history of the city through the stories of its people. In her film she tries after the 1982 Israeli invasion, which caused so much damage and chaos, to reconstruct her own memories of the place offering accounts of herself, her sister Maha, her uncle and her friends, interspersing them with newspaper clips and personal photographs to illustrate her preoccupations and concerns in relation to Sidon at different times.