Single mother Maia lives in Montreal with her daughter Alex. When they receive a box from Lebanon containing Maia’s old diaries and tapes, Alex and the audience find themselves transported into her mother’s adolescence in Beirut, in the midst of the country’s civil war. Maia, unwilling to face confronting painful memories, forbids Alex from opening the box, but the temptation is too strong and the past comes hurtling towards her, with it images of joy, youth, dancing, bombs and destruction.

Memory Box is the rare film that gives a voice to that particular generation who had to face unbearable violence and destruction at the most optimistic, hopeful time in their lives. It also resonates with the younger generation who has grown up in the shadow of the war, with its secrecy, its unexpiated crimes, its lack of accountability. And yet, the film allows us to glimpse beneath the veil of conflict to witness the brightness and hope that the people living through it were still capable of. The filmmakers use a patchwork of archives, sounds, videos and dreams to beautifully stitch together a textured story of generational connection in an ode to the importance of memory. — ABLA KANDALAFT