Randa Chahal Sabag
Randa Chahal Sabbag was a Lebanese film director, producer and screenwriter born to an Iraqi mother and Lebanese father.
She died from cancer at the age of 54.
Awards
- National Order of the Cedar, national decoration, Lebanon, 2003
- Nestor Almendros Prize, New York City, 2000
Themes
Les Infidèles, a 1997 drama, is about the relationship between a French diplomat and a former Islamist who agrees to turn over the names of his colleagues if the French government will release an imprisoned friend.
Civilisées released in 1999, is a black comedy about the Lebanese Civil War, which killed at least 100,000 people. Sabbag deployed a 'vaudevillian cast' including foreign servants and philanthropists, visiting expatriates, militiamen and criminals – in a profane and disunified story mixing elements of absurdist plays. Some 40 minutes of the film was censored for its 'obscenity' and 'uncomplimentary representation of Lebanon during this particularly unsavory spell of its history'. It was subsequently screened only once, at the Beirut International Film Festival.
Sabbag became noted in 2003 with The Kite, which received the Silver Lion at the 2003 Venice Film Festival and won several prestigious prizes and international acclaim; the Grand Special Jury Prize, the Cinema for Peace Award and the Laterna Magica Prize. Set in a low-key South Lebanese village, the film is about love, life, death and the absurdity of the Israeli occupation, seen from the perspective of a Druze family separated following the division of their village into two with one half annexed to Israel. The story evolves around an arranged marriage between Lamia, a 16-year-old Lebanese Druze girl, and her Israeli Druze cousin. The drama unfolds under the vigilant yet impotent Israeli-Lebanese border guards; one of whom is played by renowned Lebanese composer, actor and playwright Ziad Rahbani. The Kite is used 'as a metaphor for love and for life at the border', it explores, with depth and sometimes humor, 'the meaning of brides, of the hope they represent for divided families and, sometimes, for divided nations'.
In 2005, Sabbag started a new project with the distinguished Lebanese-American Hollywood film-producer Elie Samaha with the working title Too Bad for Them. The film was expected to combine comedy, music, dancing as well as politics, and North-South socio-economic disparities. However, the film was unreleased at the time of her death.
Filmography
| Year | Title | Notes |
| 2007 | Too Bad for Them |
|
| 2002 | Le Cerf-Volant | |
| 2000 | Souha, survivre à l'enfer | |
| 1999 | Civilisées | |
| 1997 | Les Infidèles | |
| 1995 | Nos Guerres Imprudentes | |
| 1991 | Ecrans de Sable | |
| 1984 | Cheikh Imam | |
| 1980 | Liban d'Autrefois | |
| 1978 | Pas à Pas |