A Dream Pointing to Aadchit is an experimental documentary or an anti-archive created during a short-lived ceasefire in the south of Lebanon and documenting my family home that got hit during the war. The film was initially planned to be filmed before the war and was an attempt to reconstruct images of a recurrent dream that I had of my grandfather working the soil around the same tree in our village land. At the time, I set out to recreate family memories and speak with the tobacco-growing villagers of Aadchit about what it means to own land. My father had recently gifted me and my sisters a piece of land there—10,500 km away from my second home, Canada—the only thing I had ever owned. After the war started in 2023, the work acquired new meanings. Filmed through a non-anthropocentric gaze, the film looks at land as a place of death and renewal. It explores love and loss while giving space for the land to speak. It is an anti-documentary that shifts the question from “What does it mean to own land?” to “What does it mean for land to be owned?” When my grandfather’s house was hit, I saw that the land itself, rich and ready to be planted again, and oblivious to the meaning of identity, was where my embodied memories lived. Avoiding monumentalizing violence, or sentimentalizing loss, this work offers a space for witnessing and reflection.
Runtime: 17’ 40”; Completion Date: 2025; Country of Origin: Canada, Lebanon; Language: Arabic with English Subtitles; Shooting Format: Digital
Credits:
Director
Ghinwa Yassine
Producers
Ghinwa Yassine
Zeina Badran
Camera
Ghinwa Yassine
Karim Ghorayeb
Editor
Deena Charara
Sound Design
Oscar Vargas
Color Correction
Devan Scott
Festival Coordination
Jonathan Akkawi
Participants
On Screen
Hassan Yassine
Hala (Umm Hussein) Atoui
Abu Hussein Atoui
Fatmeh Yassine
Voice Only
Firial Rteil
Khadija Yassine
Sally Yassine
Farah Yassine
Zeinab Hayek
Special Thanks
Darine Hoteit
Nadia Shihab
Sarah Shamash