Interview with Abbas Fahdel
“Bearing witness implies responsibility. The personal approach openly acknowledges that responsibility. I am there, I am affected, I am vulnerable. The camera does not float above events; it trembles with them. That trembling is not a weakness — it is the ethical foundation of the film.”
By Mauro Lukasievicz
In films such as Homeland: Iraq Year Zero and We Iraqis, you transformed national memory into a deeply human cinematic archive. What continuities — and what ruptures — do you see between those works about Iraq and your two most recent films shot in Lebanon?
The strongest continuity lies in the everyday. In We Iraqis and Homeland: Iraq Year Zero, I was already filming history through the daily life of my large Iraqi family — meals, conversations, disagreements, waiting, boredom, affection. War and occupation were present, but always filtered through ordinary gestures and domestic time. National history entered the films through the intimate space of family life.
This same approach continues in Tales of the Purple House and Tales of the Wounded Land, where I film the daily life of my small Lebanese family. What changes is not the method, but the scale and the degree of exposure. In Iraq, I was filming within a wide family constellation, where intimacy was shared and dispersed among many voices. In Lebanon, the circle narrows dramatically: a home, a partner, a child. The family becomes more fragile, more exposed, more immediately threatened.
The rupture, therefore, is not a shift from collective to personal, but a collapse of distance. In Lebanon, history does not just pass through the family — it besieges it. The films no longer observe the transformation of everyday life under war; they unfold from inside a life already under direct assault. The camera remains rooted in the domestic space, but that space itself is now a frontline.
In Tales of the Purple House and Tales of the Wounded Land, the camera moves even closer to your family life. What led you to intertwine your personal intimacy so directly with large-scale historical events?
It was not a decision taken in advance. It came from reality itself. When war reaches your doorstep, there is no longer a separation between private life and historical catastrophe. My filming began, quite simply, as a father documenting his child—something banal, almost instinctive. Then history violently intruded.
At that moment, excluding my family from the film would have meant lying. It would have meant pretending that war happens elsewhere, to others. By filming my family, I am not claiming a special status; I am saying that this is how war truly operates: it enters kitchens, bedrooms, childhoods. Intimacy becomes the most honest scale at which to film the catastrophe.
You have said that the personal approach is not an aesthetic choice, but an ethical necessity. Why do you believe it is impossible to be a “neutral” observer when filming in a context of war?
Neutrality in war is often a mask for indifference or for alignment with power. When bombs fall, when civilians are targeted, when entire regions are erased, pretending to stand “in the middle” is already a political position. As a filmmaker, I am not a judge or a propagandist, but I am a witness. And witnessing implies responsibility. The personal approach acknowledges this responsibility openly. I am there, I am affected, I am vulnerable. The camera does not float above events; it trembles with them. That trembling is not a weakness—it is the ethical ground of the film.
AÑO: 2025
120 minutos
Director: Abbas Fahdel
Tales of the Wounded Land
Jueves 5 y 19 de febrero / 20hs
ARTHAUS / Bartolomé Mitre 434. CABA
Selecciones: Locarno 2025 (Ganadora Mejor Dirección) – DocLisboa – Tallinn Black Nights – Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival – Viennale – El Gouna Film Festival – Seminici
In the film, you pay particular attention to material destruction — houses, schools, cemeteries, olive groves — elements that are often overshadowed by the loss of human life. Why was it important for you to document this form of devastation as well?
Because destroying a place is another way of killing its people. Homes are not just structures; they are memory, continuity, belonging. Cemeteries carry genealogy and mourning. Olive trees hold centuries of labor and survival. When these are erased, it is an attack on time itself.
Media images often reduce war to body counts, as if life could be quantified. I wanted to show what disappears silently: landscapes, daily routes, familiar horizons. This destruction is not collateral—it is intentional, and it aims at making return impossible.
Tales of the Wounded Land is a family-made, low-budget project filmed under real conditions of danger. How do you manage to maintain creative clarity and the determination to keep filming when your own family is under threat?
Creative clarity does not come from comfort; it comes from necessity. Filming was not something I did despite the danger—it was something I did because of it. The act of filming helped me remain present, attentive, grounded.
Of course, fear was constant. There were moments when the camera stopped, when protection came first. But the simplicity of the setup—a phone, a small camera, family members—allowed filming to remain part of life, not an external operation. The film grew organically, like a diary written under fire.
The poems that appear throughout the film introduce a lyrical and metaphysical dimension. At what point did you realize that these personal texts belonged in the film, and what role do they play within the narrative?
The poems were written before I knew they would belong to a film. They were a way of surviving mentally, of processing what images alone could not hold. At some point, I understood that they were not commentary, but another layer of testimony.
They offer breathing spaces. They allow thought, grief, and metaphysical questioning to coexist with concrete reality. War reduces language to orders, threats, statistics. Poetry restores ambiguity, doubt, and inner life.
You have been very careful to avoid explicit images of horror. How do you define the boundary between showing the violence necessary to understand war and preserving the dignity of those who suffer it?
For me, the boundary is dignity. Horror does not need to be exhibited to be understood. In fact, repetition of explicit violence often anesthetizes rather than enlightens.
I prefer to film the aftermath, the waiting, the fear in ordinary moments. These images respect the dead and the living. They allow viewers to imagine, rather than consume, suffering. Cinema should not reproduce the violence of war in its gaze.
What do you hope this film will mean for the communities of southern Lebanon, whose towns remain largely destroyed and whose history risks being forgotten or distorted?
I hope the film will stand as a trace—a refusal of erasure. Not a monument, but a fragile record of lived experience. Something that says: we were here, this happened to us, our lives mattered.
If the film can help preserve memory against denial, simplification, or political manipulation, then it has fulfilled its role. Above all, I hope it offers recognition—because recognition is the first step toward justice.