Sous le béton

Finding Lobster Soup (2020-also reviewed) to be a fascinating, understated doc, I was curious about the lone completely fictional movie screening/ streaming at the 2021 WOW Film Festival, which led to me breaking the concrete.

View on the film:

Sinking deeper into the ocean as the threat of terrorists attacks hangs in the air above ground, writer/director Roy Arida takes a deep dive in his feature film debut, by closely working with cinematographer Jacques Girault to reel Alain ( played with a sharp, single minded determination by a terrific Alain Najm) in with wonderful, underwater close-ups on Alain finding a moment of peace in the tranquillity of blue.

Coming up for air to the sparse sounds of Karim Douaidy's score, Arida contrasts the calm in the sea with a layered, subtle soundtrack. Reflecting the fragmented screenplay, Arida fills the silences in Douaidy's score with bomb blasts, police sirens and gun fire tragically being a permanent fixture to the sounds of Lebanon, which on vast canvas wide-shots Arida fills with black smoke and crumbling concrete buildings,that fill Alain to dive under the concrete.