Contemporary Beirut. A tired-looking young man named Malek tries to persuade the attractive Zeina to give him a second chance. It’s an important day as well for his mother Claudia because she has finally allowed her son to convince her: they will go and declare his father officially dead – fifteen years after the man disappeared. After the end of the Civil War, 17,000 Beirut residents had gone missing, including the uncle of codirector Khalil Joreige. One of many tragic, open-ended events, this experience became the basis for the story of A Perfect Day, a critically acclaimed film which, despite its brooding tone, relays a message urging reconciliation with the sorrows of the past. Malek suffers from narcolepsy in combination with a syndrome that interrupts his breathing during sleep. The almost symbolic illness comes on more acutely in the chaotic city in which Malek lives with hundreds of thousands of others who focus intently on today while living with indelible memories of the past.