MEMORY BOX

Memory Box is an exceptional Canadian-Lebanese-French film, written and directed by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige.

Maia, a single mother, lives in Montreal with her teenage daughter Alex. On Christmas Eve, they receive an unexpected delivery: notebooks, cassettes, and photographs, sent by Maia, between the ages of 13 and 18, from 1980s Beirut, to her best friend who had left for Paris to escape the war. Maia refuses to open this Pandora’s Box or confront its memories, but Alex can’t resist its siren call. The stories (fact or fiction?) of her mother’s tumultuous adolescence, first love and the murderous war that surrounded her, uncover previously well-kept secrets.

Well-known for their experimental techniques, the filmmaking duo used Hadjithomas’s own journals and tapes covering 1982 to 1988 and Joreige’s photographs of the Lebanese civil war to mix imagination and reality.

The film had its worldwide premiere at the 71st Berlin International Film Festival in March 2021.