Synopsis:
Brigitte lives with her boyfriend, Daniel, who is on the run having escaped from prison for a series of armed robbery offences. Brigitte is a few months’ from giving birth when the couple’s home is raided by the police. At the time, Daniel is involved in a violent robbery which goes wrong – a policeman is killed and he is arrested. Both Daniel and Brigitte end up in prison, although Brigitte’s sentence is reduced to a few months. Daniel however must remain in prison for 18 years. Realising that this will destroy her husband, Brigitte resolves to rescue him in a daring prison escape involving a helicopter…

1.02GB | 1h 42mn | 762×412 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/C6244E81383B5FC/La.fille.de.l.air.1992.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:None

The post Maroun Bagdadi – La fille de l’air AKA The Girl in the Air (1992) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

In the aftermath of the 1967 defeat, four young Lebanese try to figure out their places in a society whose rules seem to have changed. It proved to be an extraordinary anticipation of the civil war that would engulf the country while the film was being edited.

http://nitroflare.com/view/327FC7DDB8043F6/Beirut%2C_Oh_Beirut.mkv

Language(s):Arabic
Subtitles:English, Arabic, French

The post Maroun Bagdadi – Beyrouth ya Beyrouth AKA Beirut, Oh Beirut (1975) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Lebanon, 1975. How Talal, an affluent young man becomes a warlord; how Soraya, the girl he leaves behind, tries to help him in abducting a businessman; how Nabil, a press photographer deals drugs under the cover of the civil war and poses as the hero he aspires to be but is not at all…

A commentary on the film from The New York Times

Quote:
The Lebanon we see in Maroun Baghdadi’s ”Little Wars” is not the place we saw in another recent film about Lebanon, Volker Schlondorff’s ”Circle of Deceit,” nor even the place we see on the news. Unlike the German Mr. Schlondorff, who brought back a visitor’s sensationalized vision of the battlefront, the Lebanese Mr. Baghdadi has made a much quieter film.

The peculiar rhythm of ”Little Wars” is slow to reveal itself. But it gradually becomes apparent that this is an unusual work, somewhat hazy but highly imaginative, in which the elements of plot and action are only minor parts of a larger scheme. Mr. Baghdadi sets up three chief characters who don’t really connect, and he paints a wartime backdrop that breeds anxiety and uncertainty but not (as in Mr. Schlondorff’s worthy but very different film) urgency and terror. For people living in a war zone, Mr. Baghdadi’s characters lead remarkably fearless lives.

The performers don’t seem like actors, and they function more as figures before the camera than as dramatic players. Soraya (Soraya Khoury), a pretty and rather fashionable young woman who can’t bring herself to leave Beirut, is awaiting the return of her lover Talal (Roger Hawa), the son of a Bey in a mountain community. The Bey has been kidnapped, and Talal has returned home to his feudal clan. Meanwhile, Soraya meets Nabil (Nabil Ismail), a photographer and prankster with a certain cynicism about war and heroism.

Nabil will tell a telephone caller that he is ”at the front” when he’s really in an American nightclub with Rod Stewart playing on the jukebox. Trying to galvanize the staff in an emergency ward, he’ll say that a friend hurt during a bungled drug transaction is actually a war casualty, and that he, Nabil, is holding a live grenade. His professional specialty is faking battle portraits of customers who, he says, ”all want to impress their mothers or their girls.”

”Are these all martyrs?” Soraya asks, looking at his portrait gallery. ”If they were all martyrs, the war would be over,” Nabil replies. The specifics of the war are deliberately not discussed. In fact, Mr. Baghdadi has gone to great lengths not to indicate the partisan identities of any of his characters; no one is identified as Christian or Moslem, and scenes of Talal’s mountain home were reportedly filmed in three different spots, so Lebanese viewers would not associate him with any particular region. The film presents different Lebanese personalities rather than different political stands: the woman who is paralyzed by indecisiveness, the reckless modern man steeped in pop culture (Nabil), the son (Talal) of a traditional family who has seemingly escaped tradition but may be forced to embrace it anew. Also in the film is a waiter who dreams of emigrating, meeting a nice American girl, having a civil ceremony and becoming ”Sam Fleifel, American Citizen.”

”Little Wars” is on the weak side as drama, and it’s somewhat obscure as a political statement, but as a still-life and mood piece it is highly effective. Miss Khoury gives the film a quiet, compelling center. And the score by Gabriel Yared is extremely enveloping, defining the film’s viewpoint as distinctly as anything else does. The music is a delicate hybrid of jazz, electronic modern sounds and the jangling rhythms of traditional Lebanese instruments, with elements of the old and the new intermingling gracefully. It’s a score full of tension and contrast, but there is also a hint of harmonious resolution. That makes it an ideal accompaniment for the troubled, complex, somewhat muted imagery that Mr. Baghdadi brings to the screen.

http://nitroflare.com/view/CFD5376453F15A2/Little_Wars.mkv

Language(s):Arabic
Subtitles:English, French, Arabic

The post Maroun Bagdadi – Les petites guerres AKA Little Wars (1982) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Doctor Fournier arrives in Beirut as the civil war is raging. He finds himself with a colleague working in a hospital controlled by a Shiite militia and treating the injured. Driven by his doctor’s oath, he crosses the demarcation line to treat Christian casualties of the ongoing clashes. This causes Muslims in his neighborhood to brand him a traitor. He is kidnapped to be exchanged for a fighter captured by Christian militiamen. The film is part of the TV series Médecins des hommes (Doctors of Men). It was considered the best movie in the series.

https://nitro.download/view/DF1F336184946A6/Lebanon,_the_Land_of_Honey_and_Incense.mkv

Language(s):Arabic, French
Subtitles:French (hardsubbed for Arabic dialogue), Arabic (for French dialogue)

The post Maroun Bagdadi – Liban, le pays du miel et de l’encens AKA Lebanon, the Land of Honey and Incense (1988) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Patrick Perrault, a photo-journalist covering the war in Beirut in the late 1980s, is himself caught up in the hostilities when one day he is picked up and bundled into a car at gun-point. Blind-folded, he is taken to an unknown location where he discovers that he is being taken hostage by Lebanese guerrillas. Robbed of his passport, stripped and forced to change into a pair of damp pyjamas, he is locked up in a cell from which there is no escape. And he is told that if he takes of his blindfold to see his captors he will be shot dead immediately. So begins his long and brutal nightmare…

http://nitroflare.com/view/9F078894A6AB918/Out_of_Life.mkv

Language(s):Arabic
Subtitles:English, French, Arabic

The post Maroun Bagdadi – Hors la vie AKA Out of Life (1991) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis
Claire (Laure Marsac) is a 16-year-old young woman who discovers her father Pierre (Bernard Giraudeau) is not a healing physician but a killer with a bloody war record in the Lebanese conflict. She runs away from home and into the arms of Kamal (Michal Albertini). While Pierre stalks two terrorists, Claire and Kamal are violently confronted by Kamal’s abandoned wife and family. The ravages of the conflict extend to those who are never participants in the battle but are among the casualties of war.

http://www.nitroflare.com/view/57FB11CEB6E1CC5/L%27Homme_voile.avi

Language:French
Subtitles:None

The post Maroun Bagdadi – L’homme voilé AKA The Veiled Man (1987) first appeared on Cinema of the World.