Nadine Labaki

Nadine Labaki was born in Baabda, Lebanon, on February 18, 1974. After finishing her high school in Beirut in 1993, she studied audiovisual communication at the University of San José in the same city, and graduated with the short film 11 Rue Pasteur , final project career that gave him an award at the Cinema Biennale of the Institute of the Arab World (IMA) in Paris.

The first steps of his filmmaking talent were put at the service of advertising and music videos for singers from the Middle East; He managed to make his way in this difficult world by participating in a television program where he demonstrated his audiovisual skills. But Labaki wanted to make movies, and in 2004 he managed to participate in the Cannes Film Festival’s Residency Program for script development, which allowed him to write the script forcaramel . This film would end up being his feature debut, and after going through the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 2006, it was successfully broadcast all over the world. Its exoticism, the fresh and choral drawing of the feminine world, the celebration of life, the kind tone called attention; It was surprising that a woman, in this case also an actress and co-writer, would make her way into the difficult world of filmmaking, traditionally dominated by men, and that she would do so with a clearly Lebanese film, even if it was also co-produced by France.

Would that be the flower of a day? Nooooo! In 2011 Labaki returned to the fray with a tape if you want more ambitious, becauseAnd now where are we going?dares to touch the thorny issue of coexistence between Christians and Muslims, with a risky cocktail of genres and a truly striking balance. If the filmmaker takes sides for someone, it is for women, who have to bear many of the consequences of the absurd and fanatical violence. Labaki recounts that the idea for this second feature occurred to her in 2008, when she learned that she was expecting her first child from her husband –and composer of the music for her films– Khaled Mouzanar: such good news coincided with riots that pointed to a possible war, “And then I said to myself: If I had a son, what would I do to prevent him from taking up a rifle and going down the street? How far would I go so that my son does not see what is happening outside and thinks that he must defend his property, his family or his ideas? The movie came from there.