LIFF
Lebanese Independent Film Festival المهرجان اللبناني للأفلام المستقلة
LIFF 2025/2026
September 4th till 13th, 2026 in the Lebanese National Theater in Beirut Cinéma Le Colisée
Program
Friday September 4th, 2026
6pm – 7pm
On ne le quitte pas, on s’en arrache – Hania Khoury
7:30pm Doors Open
8pm Opening Ceremony
Through their films,
The artists below explore what defines us, shapes us, and connects us: Our Identity
Talia Azar – pomegranade
Charbel Chouchany – Anywhere But Here
Danielle Jaajaa – THE BOOMERANG
Alex Meouchy – Ant, Beatle, Soul delirium
Robert Minassian – Mother, Where Are You?
Vanessa Abdel Aal – Anthropomorphic City
Nataly Chehade – We Are Here
Ray Zakaria – غدر Измена
Meet the artists
Patrick Tass – Mea Culpa
Master of ceremonies: Carlos Azar
Saturday September 5th, 2026
6pm – 7:30pm
Book of Suffocations – Yoan Zoghbi
Pause – Khalid Mursi Hamoud
Saho – Jana Gerges
How I became “the astray” – Joe Habka
Analogical – Jason Saikaly
Q and A
7:30pm -9pm
Drought – Feryal Stietie
Six Rooms – Yorgo Katergi
The Two Prisons of Roumieh – Antoni Barakat
What Could Have Been – Amanda Barakat
Q and A
9pm -11pm
Match in a Haystack – Joe Hill
Q and A
Sunday September 6th, 2026
6pm – 7:30pm
BOOZA – George Saade
Black Tooth – Elio El Khoury
Shutter – Jad Banjarian
Nobody – Nour Farran
MAYA – Anna Abi Daoud
Q and A
7:30pm – 9pm
Thud In The Void – Raghid Monzer
Ill-usion – Tony Mobarak
99 – Charbel Tabet
Dissolve – Daniel Daher
Q and A
9pm – 11pm
GENKEYS – Abbas Fadllalah
Q and A
Monday September 7th, 2026
6pm – 7:30pm
Beirut Addio – Singing under the bombs – Jean Claude Chinchere
Ever Still Here – Stephanie El Khoury
Baião d’intérieurs – Héloïse Dorsan-Rachet
TRUTH OF A HOMELAND – Elias Chalhoub
SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN – Klara El Feghali
Quo vadis, Meryem ! – Amine Zeriouh
A Dream Pointing to Aadchit – Ghinwa Yassine
Somewhere, but not here – Karel Malkoun
THE LAST CEDARS – Rafael Farhat
Q and A
7:30pm – 9pm
Take Care of My Johny – Anothony Bou Rjeili
Stay – Jaime Daccache
Yeprem: The Spark of a Legacy – Joseph Hanna
Beyond Duty – Moutaz Bellah
Agapé – Matteo El Hani
Q and A
9pm – 11pm
CITY EXTERMINATOR – Christophe Karabache
Q and A
Tuesday September 8th, 2026
6pm – 7:30pm
The Angels of Winter – Peter Francis Lucas
PIRET – Julián De La Chica
Buzzymentary – Charbel Salim Chamoun
Two Souls – Moaz Wahid Moussa
Abu Shanab – Anthony Abdo
Beyond the edge – Alaa Aboutaam
Her Own peak – Emilio Bou Onk
Q and A
7:30pm – 9pm
HOLLYWOOD BOMB: The “Most Important” Movie Never Made–and the Nuclear Fallout Today – Greg Mitchell
Displaced – Razan Saylami
Komorebi – Avedis Momjian
The HUM – Julia S.Ruth
TOUCHED – Rana Rachid
Q and A
9pm – 11pm
Le Souffle Du Temps – Laetitia Moya Moukarzel
Le Desir D’andre – Issam Sleiman
And Then – Philippe Dahdouh
Alvart – Valentina Kalaydjian
The Method – Leticia Hanna
SILENT WATERS – Hugo Houchar
Q and A
Wednesday September 9th, 2026
6pm – 7:30pm
SNAKE HILL – Joelle Abou Chabke
BURY ME – Mariana Restock
Dead While Living – Jawad Samir Zaarour
Now the sky is mine – Omar Ahmad
Khalidan Jihad Anwar Aboukhaled
Q and A
7:30pm – 9pm
The Moment – Chantale Gemayel
TWO DEAD LEAVES – Mohamad Hamadan Eidy
WOKEN – Jawad Zaarour
Q and A
9pm – 11pm
It has a face – Georgio Nassif
TRUCE – Pya Edgar Eid
Welcome Back, Back Again, Again and Again – Najwa Hasbini, Selina Khoury, Racha Mawla, Carl Youssef
THE RESILIENCE OF THE POPPY’ – Mona Hammoud
Q and A
Thursday September 10th, 2026
6pm – 7:30pm
KRAKEN – Mhammad Ali Siblini
Eve – Fatima Al Zahraa Radi Al Massri
The Capricorn – Hassan Jaafar Haidar
The Finale Rayan – Mahmoud Tikriti
Moon – Prodigy – Lara Maamoun
Q and A
7:30pm – 9pm
The Withered Willow – Sam Sakhle
And Now What ? – Marie Thérèse Abou Zeid
Aichiyeh, Silence at Dawn – Oliver Bou Eid
YOUR LANDLORD TO THE LORD – Karim Chreyteh
LOAFERS – Sarah El bitar
Q and A
9pm – 11pm
40 days – Peter Takla
Q and A
Friday September 11th, 2026
6pm – 7:30pm
in the skin of the Monster – Karim Chreyteh
4 Out Of 5 – Christina Fatayri
Soul – Talya Marc Anthony Haddad
Press Post – Melissa Hajj
Pomegranade – Talia sagih Azar
Forget-Me-Not – Miled Antoine Morkos
Within – Antonio Bou Lotfallah
Q and A
7:30pm – 9pm
Penalty – Lama Mohamad Youssef
A Place for Me – Maya Sami Tabsh
In Loving Memory – RFA
Teta Nawal – Ghia Zaatari, Bachar Khatter
naba’ – Abbass abed Fadelallah
The First Sin – Sara Houchaimi
Judge The Freak – daniel Bassam el atrache
Q and A
9pm -11pm
For a Future that May or May Never Be – Lama Tauk
A 1000$ Job – Charbel Assaf
Costi – Siraj Rabih Hasan
Perfect Storm – Jad Chatila
One Moment – Abdallah Suleiman Azzam
No Place To Go – Bachar Bzeih
Q and A
Saturday September 12th, 2026
5pm – 6:00pm
Panel with Egyptian Actor Houssam Dagher
A masterclass as part of the festival program on the Sanford Meisner approach to acting for film, which he has been teaching in Egypt since 2009.
6pm – 7:30pm
MOM – Ivan Sosnin
Naka’ – Al-Sukun Zainab Akram Almokatran
In Between – Maria Ararat Apelian
Once Upon A Life – Andy Rahy
كالأرز خالدًا – Karen Hamid Masry
Held in a timeless embrace – Alexa Chidiac
Q and A
7:30pm – 9pm
Red Rope – Marliyne Abi Frem
My Lebanon – Lamya Razzouk
FEAR episode 8 – Karim Chreyteh
Peony – Christine Tannous
Breath – Dima Nachawi
WEAK SIGNAL – Youssef Hamid
Q and A
9pm – 11pm
Together – Fadia Ahmad
Q and A
Sunday September 13, 2026
6pm – 7pm
Seif – Mohamed Shenawy
Reminder ; Pill – Gaelle Saad
Q and A
7pm – 8:30pm
A-crochet – Karim Chreyteh
Coulisses – Karim Chreyteh & Serge El hayel
Q and A
8:30
Award show
The voice, the presence, and the energy that will carry us through the Opening Ceremony night. We’re proud to welcome Carlos Azar as the Master of Ceremonies of LIFF 2026. With his unmistakable charisma and commanding presence, Carlos will take the LIFF stage and guide us through a celebration of stories, filmmakers, and independent cinema from Lebanon and around the world.
Selected Scripts:
Timothy Keller – La città delle anime reiette (City of Outcast Souls)
A harsh black and white in Turin: a city chewed up by gentrification and heavy with inequality. Five characters in a surreal drama that does not disdain a smile and is not afraid of the unusual, where reality and the dreamlike dimension are blurred.
A maladjusted young factory worker decides to end his life by jumping into the void.
A theater actress stages “Medea” and moonlights as a cocaine dealer.
A career woman is betrayed by her husband: anger and jealousy will lead her to a tragic choice.
A middle-aged father cannot forgive the instant that changed his existence.
A stage director, fighting against the world, loses his life in an accident.
Through non-chronological flashbacks, an illusory time and a fragmented, confused memory reveal the connections between the various characters: thus, we will discover the relationship between the young worker and the career woman; a mother who kills her children in a psychotic delusion; a father persecuted by the media and the wiretaps of the former Prime Minister Berlusconi (made public years ago) that precisely describe the social, cultural, and moral drifts of Italy (“Bel Paese”) that are still without clear direction today.
Rasha Kordiya – AQABAT AL-KHALIDIYA
In November 2021, Rasha, a Palestinian woman living in Denmark, travels alone to Palestine for the second time, visiting Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Nazareth in search of an emotional connection to a homeland she knows mostly through inherited memories, family stories, and the few visits she experienced herself.
In Jaffa, she searches for her grandfather’s old shop among fading traces of the past. In Jerusalem, while praying at Al-Aqsa Mosque, she befriends Umm Moataz, a local woman who helps her feel less like a tourist and more connected to the city. She also meets Eman, a warm-hearted woman from Nazareth who later invites her to visit the city.
As Rasha moves between moments of warmth, memory, and ordinary daily life, a violent incident suddenly changes the atmosphere in Jerusalem. On her way to Al-Aqsa before dawn, she becomes lost in the empty alleys of the Old City and finds herself surrounded by armed soldiers in a moment that forces her to confront fear, displacement, and the meaning of belonging she struggles to hold on to.
Blending memory, longing, and quiet resistance, Aqabat Al-Khalidiya is an intimate human story about identity, inherited exile, and the emotional weight of returning to a place that still feels both familiar and unreachable.
Hannah Vernot – (Pilot) Lilac of the Valley: Carnal Bloom
One night, a group of children stumble across a dead body while trespassing on a golf course. Fresh off her latest kill, assassin Layla stumbles into a bar and meets Arlynette Flores and her friends. The group views a news flash declaring the body at the golf course who is one of Layla’s kills missing. She calls her housemates, her brother and his fiancee, saying she’ll claim herself the killer of the man on the golf course and receive his bounty.
Meanwhile, the four children that discovered the body consult an old woman who works at the local hospital’s mortuary on performing an autopsy. Layla sneaks into the country club that holds the golf course, feigning urinating on herself to be let in. She tricks the security guard and searches every pool in the golf course, but finds no body. The night before, the four children stole it in an attempt to bring it to Platina, the mortuary technician, but are apprehended by Arlynette who loads the body into her car and has the children go with her.
Layla returns to her rental house just in time to witness her landlord chase and throw things at her housemates. They climb into the car and Layla drives them into the woods. They end up following an abandoned dirt trail and then a pair of wheelbarrow tracks to a burial site where multiple bodies including the one from the golf course lie. The children and Arlynette arrive, revealing Arlynette is collecting the bounties of targets she didn’t kill. Layla gets her to agree to split the bounty with her. Later, one of the children reports back to Platina of what happened with the body.
MG Hardie – Central Fill
A strict lead technician in an overworked central pharmacy is forced to train a new hire while managing chaos, corporate pressure, and a system on the verge of collapse.
Gabriella Theotokos – Scattered in the Sand
A young Palestinian tunnel worker forced to guard Israeli hostages during the war must choose between loyalty, survival, and his own conscience as violence closes in.
MOHAMAD ALGHANDOUR – The 6th number
A single dream has haunted Hassan for years, driving him to chase people he encounters in his daily life on the streets of Beirut, in search of winning lottery numbers. One final delivery round turns into a decisive chase.
Laura Calderini – THE GUILT WITHIN ME
john matthew tyson – The Falconer
Alsaqarin
A young boy learns the ancient art of falconry in Syria. Raising a juvenile peregrine falcon he finds hope and courage in a place where nobody gets to be a kid for long.
Keith McCarthy – The End of Playtime
Is it the end of the world and who’s responsible?
The old lady lives with her grandson, Simon, in a flat in a large block. The Fingersmith – who kills and then cuts off the victim’s fingers – stalks the city. Very early one morning, there is a light outside and everyone has gone. Simon has left to seek help and leaves the old lady alone with the cat. He tells her not to go out and not to let anyone in, but she admits Leon and Janie. Leon says that they live in the flat below but the old lady cannot recall him.
Ramanath Iyer – Home – Amamri
Immortality has been an aspiration of many powerful humans for ages and the aspiration continues even today. However, Immortality is mostly viewed as continuation of a life in a body or avoiding death. Just because death is seen as an end to life, as a point in time where our experience of life ceases, the experience beyond death is an unknown.
Reham Y – The Yellow Bird
A young girl wakes up trapped in a cold, dark prison cell with no memory of how she got there. Consumed by despair, her will to survive fades—until an unexpected visitor brings a spark of hope that could change everything
Saurabh Rao – Insurmountable
Shay’s struggle against insurmountable odds to achieve his dreams teaches him a valuable life lesson.
georgio nassif – Sweet Potato
Through a story shared between him and his daughter Zena, Nour looks for moments of closure and connection, ultimately embracing the journey of healing and redemption in a world slightly less flawed than our own.
Fahiemah Al-Ali – Slim Shadiyah
Caught between the expectations of her traditional immigrant household and the social minefield of middle school, a rap-obsessed 12-year-old discovers an uninhibited alter ego that gives her the courage to confront her bullies and claim her voice the only way she knows how – on beat.
Kevin Brodie – Season of Mists
A Kurdish escapee from an honor killing living in Boston is accused of terrorism and sent to a detention center from which she must find the strength to resist her captors and gain freedom–forcing a confrontation with the brother that still wants her dead.
chris williamson – Legacy
As President Elect of the Royal Institute of British Architects I have met and know a number of great artists, architects, and other professionals many now towards the end of their careers. I have had the opportunity to study the way the think about their legacy . I have written using these contemporary figures but chosen to use a historic setting to emphasis certain aspects which would not be possible if set in present day.
Robin Neil – Chambers
The Threads that Bind Two war scarred women, of different cultures, cling to sanity through their distinctive touchstone – Embroidery. One’s biracial teenage daughter reinvigorates their spirits. Uniting a broken community.
Aaron Huckleberry – The Tree With No Heart
In war-torn Syria, a troubled woman, her idealistic son, and her mentally challenged cousin take in a wounded Western aid worker, unknowingly igniting a chain of deadly consequences that forces them to confront their pasts, their beliefs, and the brutal realities of survival.
LIFF 