When Cairo Station was released in 1958, Youssef Chahine was still At the beginning of his career. Yet with this single film, he cemented his reputation as a provocateur. In fact, Cairo Station marked a seismic shift for Egyptian cinema. Chahine did not merely challenge convention, he dismantled it entirely.

In the 1960s, however, the evolution of artistic arthouse cinema on all continents was inspired by worldwide de-colonisation. The interest in indigenous forms of narrations and visual representation rose tremendously and allowed such exceptional cinematic experiments like The Night of Counting the Years.

Ziad Doueiri carves out his own brand of cinematic freedom, weaving together fragments of a Beirut on the brink of irreversible change, building a film from the ruins of a city, turning the nightmare of war into a vivid, almost tactile memory.