The Kite (film)
| The kite | |
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| Directed by | Randa Chahal Sabag |
| Written by | Randa Chahal Sabag |
| Starring |
Flavia Bechara Maher Bsaibes Julia Kassar Liliane Nemri Ziad Rahbani |
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Release date
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2003 |
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Running time
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75 minutes |
| Country | Lebanon |
| Language | Arabic |
The Kite (French: Le Cerf-volant, Arabic: Tayyara men wara — طيّارة من ورق) is a 2003 Lebanese film by the director Randa Chahal Sabag. It tells the story of a fifteen-year-old Lebanese girl, from a Druze community, who is forced to marry her cousin across the Israeli border, but finds herself in love with an Israeli soldier. Le Cerf-volant was Sabag's most commercially and critically successful movie, and her last; she died in 2008. The film was Lebanon's official submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 76th Academy Awards. Although it never received a theatrical release in the United States, the film was released to DVD in 2009 by First Run Features.
The Kite is set in a village called Deir Mimas over the border of the pre-occupied territories in southern Lebanon (occupied by Israel). The 16-year-old Lebanese girl Lamia (Flavia Bechara) lives with her family in the village. Her family had promised to marry her off to her cousin Samy (Edmond Haddad), who lives on the Israel side. Lamia’s mother, Amira (Randa Asmar) was unwilling and dejected to send her daughter away because that meant that Lamia could never come back because of the tense political situation at the border.
Lamia, too, is completely reluctant to agree to the marriage because she has never seen him nor does she love him. She is simply a naïve young teenager who has no idea about marriage. Similarly, on the other side, Samy was not much interested in marrying his cousin either, however he agreed to the marriage because he thought it would help Lamia escape her village.
How the marriage was conducted is quite interesting too. The Lebanon side and Israel side had a no-man’s land between them. So, they communicated with each other only through megaphones and they could see each other only through binoculars. Before the marriage, the girl has to get a pass from the authorities to cross the border. The day of the wedding, the entire village gathers at the border gates to witness Lamia being sent across the border. On the Israeli side, people wave a white flag as a signal to start. Lamia hugs her family and starts her long walk towards the Israeli border in her majestic wedding gown and a lone bouquet. She keeps looking back knowing that she may never return.
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