In June of 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, which was already reeling from its ongoing civil war. In his feature debut, director Oualid Mouaness revisits this cataclysmic moment in Lebanese history through a different lens. At a private school on the outskirts of Beirut, as the geopolitical conflict inches closer and closer, 11-year-old Wissam (Mohamad Dalli) is more intent on finding the courage to tell his classmate he loves her. For a dreamer like Wissam, who is more likely to be drawing than playing football, it’s hard to comprehend the gravity of the impending violence. But for his teachers, Yesmine (Nadine Labaki) and Joseph (Rodrigue Sleiman), the jets in the sky signal something greater. As they try to mask their growing fears for the sake of the students, they also attempt to hide the fractures in their relationship, as they fall on different sides of the political divide. Mouaness, who also wrote the script, splits the film between these two perspectives; that of the adults and that of the children, to explore the complexities of love and war.
1982 (2019)
Audio: Arabic + English | Subtitle: English
aerial bombing, aerial combat, animated sequence, animation and live action, arabic, asia, beirut lebanon, brink of war, bus, childhood, christian lebanese, class, classroom, coming of age, drawing, elementary school, evacuation, exam, female protagonist, friendship, friendship betrayal, geopolitical conflict, global perspectives, israel lebanon war, lebanon, listening to a radio, loosely based on a true story, middle east, part animated, pencil drawing, playing soccer, private school, radio news, reference to brooke shields, reference to mazinger super robot, rubik's cube, school, semi autobiographical, soccer, social justice, super robot, teacher, telephone line cut, year 1982, year as title