The pinnacle of Lebanese director Randa Chahal Sabbag’s career also happened to be her swan song. The Kite/Le cerf-volant (2003) is an absurdist tragicomedy about a Lebanese teenager caught between two worlds; one of forbidden love and another of familial obligation. This coming-of-age story stars Flavia Bechara as the protagonist Lamia and takes place in the Druze community of Deir Mimas, a village situated on the Lebanon-Israel border. Chahal Sabbag’s poignant film opens and closes with scenes featuring the protagonist’s attempts to cross the barbwire-lined border that cuts the village in half. Families living on opposite sides can only see and communicate with each other by visiting the border and using megaphones and binoculars.
Born in Lebanon, Randa Chahal Sabbag was the daughter of a Christian mother and Sunni Muslim father. Carefree and rebellious, much like her character Lamia, Chahal Sabbag frequently went against social norms. She moved from Lebanon to France where she studied film at the Louis Lumiere School in Paris. She would often come back to Lebanon to film documentaries about her homeland. She made two fictional feature films in the 1990s, Sand Screens (1991) and A Civilized People (1999), the latter being banned in Lebanon. Chahal Sabbag was a thought-provoking filmmaker who was willing to take risks and explore controversial topics. While all of her films were made in Lebanon, the majority of the funding and recognition was international. That is until The Kite was released, which earned the filmmaker the Chevalier of the Order of the Cedar, Lebanon’s highest distinction. The Beirut newspaper The Daily Star called the film “a triumph for Lebanese film.”
The Kite premiered at the Venice Film Festival where Chahal Sabbag received the Silver Lion Grand Prize, the Cinema for Peace Award and the Laterna Magica Prize. It went on to screen at festivals like the Gothenburg Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival and the Philadelphia International Film Festival. It was not released theatrically in the US but has screened at various repertory theaters and was made available on DVD by First Run Features. A critic for MoMA wrote of the film, “The Kite is rich in subtly rendered comedy and tragedy. With a melancholy mood heightened by its poetic widescreen compositions…” Variety gave The Kite a mixed review but noted how effectively Chahal Sabbag “mixes light humor with a tender love story”.
Chahal Sabbag died of cancer in 2008. She left behind two works in progress with The Kite being her final finished project. In the obituary for The Guardian, Olivia Snaije wrote “Chahal’s premature death leaves a void in the Middle Eastern world of film, where freedom of expression requires boundless courage and tenacity.”
by Raquel Stecher
