Lebanese director Nadine Labaki delivers powerful tribute to Lebanon at Cannes Film Festival

Logo
Sites
Culture 24-05-2026 | 10:01

Lebanese director Nadine Labaki delivers powerful tribute to Lebanon at Cannes Film Festival

The Oscar-nominated filmmaker reflects on war, uncertainty, and the resilience of Lebanese art during an emotional ceremony.

Save Icon
Lebanese director Nadine Labaki delivers powerful tribute to Lebanon at Cannes Film Festival
Lebanese director Nadine Labaki at the Cannes Film Festival. (AFP)
Smaller Bigger

Before presenting the Best Screenplay award at the closing ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival, Lebanese director Nadine Labaki, winner of the Jury Prize in 2018 for her film Capernaum, could not help but think of Lebanon, describing it as a country “doomed to live the worst-case scenarios since its inception.”

 

Labaki, who presented the award to French filmmaker Emmanuel Marre for the film A Man of His Time, asked: “Is it wise to leave our children and leave Lebanon while our country is going through a devastating war? Do we have the right to celebrate life while death surrounds us?”

 

 

She added that since she and her husband, composer Khaled Mouzanar— a jury member of Un Certain Regard—received the invitation to the festival, she has lived “a whirlwind of contradictions, emotions, and uncertainties,” before affirming: “But I remember that this small country, which barely appears on the map, continues defiantly, despite wounds and injustices, to shout, sing, write, make films, and love life, as if art has become our last act of resistance.”

 

Tags
Cannes Film Festival ، Nadine Labaki ، Lebanon ، Nadine Labak ، Emmanuel Marre