Do You Love Me is a playful and personal journey through Lebanon’s audiovisual memory, composed entirely of archival footage. It is a love letter to Beirut, spanning 70 years of film, TV, home videos, and photography, exploring the Lebanese collective psyche – marked by joy and intimacy, destruction and loss. Through the eyes of citizens, filmmakers and artists, the film reconstructs a fragmented history in a country without a national archive, celebrating creative expression as both resistance, renewal and a way to preserve memory.
SCREENINGS & AWARDS
World Premiere: Venice Film Festival – Giornate degli Autori 2025
2025 Hamburg Film Festival
2025 Middle East Now Festival
2025 Doclisboa
2025 Sao Paulo IFF
2025 Cinemed
2025 IFFMH Internationales Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg
2025 Movies on War
2025 Cairo International Film Festival
2025 IDFA
2025 RIDM
2025 Festival des 3 Continents
2025 Marrakech International Film Festival
2025 Watch Docs
2026 Goteborg Film Festival
2026 DocPoint Helsinki Documentary Film Festival
2026 DocPoint Tallinn
2026 Antenna DFF
And more: ICA London (until March 4), Bertha DocHouse
Upcoming: Documental Ambulante (March 5 – May 21), CPH:DOX (March 11-22), SXSW (March 12-18), La Clef Revival Paris (March 15), Docville (March 18-26), Arab Film Days Oslo (March 19-22)
AWARDS
- Political Film Award of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung at Hamburg Film Festival 2025
“Between wars, the past echoes, the future a mirage – reality schizophrenic, full of tears and laughter. A reflection in shattered, colourful glass, distorting one’s own image and reality – sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly – filled with grief and the hope of arriving: in peace, in dignity, in life. Director Lana Daher achieves something extraordinary. Driven by longing, she ascends into the highs and lows of the images of the past, piecing together a mosaic of memories – her own and those of others – that reveals a future which could be beautiful. Through her meticulous, years-long, almost obsessive process, she has created a poetic film in a form we have never seen before. Lana Daher shows us Beirut, the Bride of the East, through the eyes of its inhabitants who love their city so deeply. Beirut’s beauty can only be understood from this perspective. Yet it is also the portrait of a divided city, of many faces and layered cultural identities. Fragments from different times and realities – documentary or staged, black-and-white or colour, day and night – are assembled to form a collage that, against all odds, advances the narrative and emotional core. This collage creates a multifaceted image of a diverse, scarred society. Lana Daher carries a broken longing for a place that is both near and far: her Lebanon, her Beirut. She shows us a city seemingly trapped in an endless loop of violence and uncertainty, lacking a shared story. The film is an emotional homage to buried homelands – Afghanistan, Sudan, Congo, Iran, Ukraine, Palestine.”
Jury Statement, Political Film Award of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung at Hamburg Film Festival 2025
- Honorable Mention at Doclisboa 2025
- Special Mention at Cinemed 2025
- Best Film in International Competition at DocPoint Helsinki Documentary Film Festival 2026
“This film stands out for its distinctive approach to national history and collective memory, focusing on a small country with a complex past. It weaves together rich and diverse archival materials, voices, music, and cinematic sources into a carefully composed collage. Shaped by histories of war, division, and destruction, but equally by love and reconstruction, this film offers a subtle and expanded understanding of what may count as history, revealing moments of everyday experience and memory that are rarely found in books but remain powerfully present in moving images.”
Jury Statement, Best Film in International Competition at DocPoint Helsinki Documentary Film Festival 2026
PRESS
Reviews: The New Arab, The Guardian, See News, Cineuropa, Le Bleu du Miroir (FR), En Primera Fila (ES), Variety – Acquisition Announcement
Interviews: Arab News, Madame Figaro, The Guardian, iO Donna, The Upcoming, W Radio, Fred Radio
Exhilarating … A remarkable rhythm that fluidly moves between calm, exuberance and disorder… [An] ode to the collective courage of Lebanese people.
Phuong Le, The Guardian
In Lebanon, there isn’t even a national archive, and this small film, just over an hour long, is an important step towards building a shared audiovisual memory: it is made up exclusively of archival footage that embrace about 70 years of the country’s history and culture (…) Do You Love Me confirms that in Lebanon, life can be very sad, but also very beautiful.
Vittoria Scarpa, Cineuropa
Do You Love Me is a gripping personal cinematic essay that captures a country’s emotional memories with a subtle eye, but it’s also an entertaining, playful journey that reflects on the springs of collective memory.
Miguel A.Reina, En Primera Fila
DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY & FILMOGRAPHY
Lana Daher
Lana Daher is a filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist based in Beirut, Lebanon. With a background in fine arts and graphic design (BFA, American University of Beirut) as well as filmmaking (MA, Goldsmiths, University of London), she has long been active in Beirut’s vibrant art and music scenes, working across sound, image, and archival practices.
Her work is grounded in deep research and intuitive storytelling, exploring the space between documentary and fiction by bringing different time periods and emotional landscapes into dialogue.
Do You Love Me is her debut feature, an archive-based essay film built from Lebanon’s rich but fragmented audiovisual history. Alongside the film, she created a website, a curated index of the resources and materials behind the project, aimed at reconnecting Lebanese film heritage with both local and wider audiences. An IDFAcademy alumna, Lana also co-produced the film through her company, My Little Films, founded in 2024.
Filmography (selection)
Veneer, 2013, 17 min
Transit, 2012, 4 min
CREDITS
Directed by Lana Daher
Written by Lana Daher & Qutaiba Barhamji
Editing Qutaiba Barhamji
Sound Pierre Armand
Post-production manager Denis Liakhov
Archive producers Denis Liakhov & Lana Daher
Colorist Alexis Lambotte
Produced by Jean-Laurent Csinidis, Lana Daher
Production companies Films de Force Majeure; My Little Films
Co-produced by Jasper Mielke, Karoline Henkel, Arto Sebasian
Co-production Wood Water Films (DE); Studio Lemon (FR)
SUPPORTED BY
ARTE France – La Lucarne
IDFA Bertha Fund
Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée
Robert Bosch Stiftung
Fonds Image de la Francophonie
Sundance Institute Documentary
Europe Creative MEDIA
Al-Jazeera Documentary
Doha Film Institute
The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture – AFAC
Région Provence-Alpes Côte d’Azur (in partnership with CNC)
PROCIREP – Société des producteurs & ANGOA
Lebanese Film Fund
AFLAMUNA
PRODUCER’S BIOGRAPHY & FILMOGRAPHY
Jean-Laurent Csinidis
Jean-Laurent Csinidis was born in 1981 in Marseille (France). Vexed by having been rejected by film schools, he studied musicology, which turned out to be fascinating. He then spent several years abroad and started working in production with the company Amour Fou (Austria/Luxembourg).
In 2010, he returned to Marseille and created Films de Force Majeure, a production company focused on auteur films and international collaborations. Over the course of his projects, he has developed a particular taste for documentary cinema – which regularly brings him back to the shores of fiction.
Since then, he has produced or co-produced 30 films, most of which have been shown in Cannes, Berlin, Locarno, Venice, as well as at the IDFA, Visions du Réel, Rotterdam, Cinéma du Réel, Annecy… Among them, several feature films that have been distributed in France and internationally.
He has also experienced periods of crisis and doubt, which workshops and training courses have helped him to overcome: EAVE, Eurodoc, Emerging Producers… He is also a member of the SPI and of the association of producers of the SUD Region (LPA).
He has been managing Films de Force Majeure since its creation. He needs to work in a team, if only to be able to talk about his children all day.
PRODUCTION COMPANY
Films de Force Majeure
147 rue Paradis 13006 Marseille, France
+33 (0) 4 84 18 30 33
contact@films-de-force-majeure.com
https://www.films-de-force-majeure.com
My Little Films
CO-PRODUCTION COMPANY
Wood Water Films
Berlin & Mannheim, Germany
+49 (0) 30 23 94 69 86
mail@woodwaterfilms.com
https://www.woodwaterfilms.com/
Studio Lemon
Marseille, France
contact@studio-lemon.fr
https://lemon-studio.fr/en/accueil-english/
