Shadows of Beirut review – chaos and crisis as woman goes back to birth city in fractured Covid-era drama

A London-dwelling émigrée goes back to Lebanon to see her dying father in this somewhat overwrought film examining a difficult childhoodThis somewhat overwrought drama was apparently shot during the Covid-19 pandemic, partly in the city of the title and partly on sets in a Bulgarian studio. Its higgledy-piggledy production schedule perhaps accounts for the film’s fractured, frenetic quality and the feeling that the characters are perpetually in motion. Mind you, to be fair, the shredded editing might also be meant to reflect the distraught mental state of protagonist Lana (Tala Calil, also co-writer and producer) and the energy of the city itself, a municipality ravaged by wars that also has some of the most chaotic traffic in the Middle East. There’s even a scene where Lana’s new friend Sirine (Flavia Bechara) is driving and wants to take her coat off so she makes Lana take the wheel, much to Lana’s terror and distress, a nonchalance about safety believable for a city where traffic lights appear to be only a suggestion.That said, Lana has a lot going on so she’s easily rattled. She left Beirut 25 years earlier, and has only come back to see her biological father of whom she has o…

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