‘Waves ’98’ By Ely Dagher

“Disillusioned with his life in the suburbs of segregated Beirut, Omar’s discovery lures him into the depths of the city. Immersed into a world that is so close yet so isolated from his reality that he eventually finds himself struggling to keep his attachments, his sense of home.”

Film by Ely Dagher (Lebanon/Qatar), 2015. Screened at Sundance, Toronto Int’ Film Festival, AFI Fest, and Milan Film Festival. Winner of Silver Plaque at Chicago Int’l Film Festival and Palme d’Or at Cannes 2015.

Filmmaker statement:

Waves ’98 is as much a narrative film as it is a personal visual essay dedicated to Dagher’s hometown, Beirut. The film is an artistic exploration of the director’s current relation with his Lebanon, his home country, projected through the story of a teenager and set in 1998. Since moving abroad to study and work, Ely Dagher has been spending more and more time outside of Lebanon, and his attachment to Beirut started to become more and more complicated. The overall narrative of the film is heavily based on Ely’s efforts to understand his changing relationship with the city and its life, juxtaposed with the narrative of a teenager’s exciting discovery of this segregated city.