Tideline

Colour, 35 mm
Canada, France, 2004, 96 min
Section: Focus on Canadian Films

Synopsis

Wahab was born in Montreal, but his parents came from Lebanon. He was brought up by his uncle and aunt, since his mother died during childbirth and his father, blamed by the family for her death, was only permitted to watch his son grow up from a distance. And when he suddenly passes away, too, Wahab discovers a box of audio cassettes revealing much about the past, his own and his parents´, and about the relationships between family members. When the uncle forbids the father to be buried alongside his wife, Wahab decides to take his body to the family grave in Lebanon. The simple trip from the airport to the cemetery becomes an unending and terrfying journey through a land demoralised by war with Syria. Wahab experiences untold cruelties but makes several good friends. However, most importantly, in the light of primitive aggression and intolerance, he becomes aware of the cost of values which, in Canada, he had taken for granted.

About the director

Wajdi Mouawad (b. 1971, Beirut) spent his childhood in Lebanon and grew up in France. He studied at the National Stage School in Montreal, where he now lives and works. He writes for newspapers and for the radio, but is mainly involved in the theatre – writing plays for children, young people and adults. He also acts and directs for the stage, and is interested, above all, in works concerning the issues of his native country and its people – war, emigration, difficulties with individual and social integration into a foreign cultural environment. He also wrote Tideline as a play and its adaptation is Mouawad’s film debut. Here he finds his own film language, he visualises the romantic notions of the hero, he allows the dead to encounter the living, and condenses the drastic past of certain characters into scenes bordering on expressive stylisation and rawness.