We Are Inside

Farah returns to Tripoli after years away, hoping to reconnect with her father through the only language he trusts – poetry.

Director:
Farah Kassem

Genre:
Documentary

Year:
2024

Duration:
180 minutes

Rating:
13+

Country:
Lebanon, Qatar, Denmark

Language:
Arabic

Subtitling:
English

Cinematography: Tebbe Schöningh

Editing: Anders Jepsen

Production: Mehdi Bekkar, Cynthia Choucair, Patricia Drati

Awards: Special Mention – Visions du Réel International Competition – Nyon, Switzerland – 2024 | Golden Apricot for Best Regional Film – Golden Apricot International Film Festival – Yerevan, Armenia – 2024 | Golden Star for Best Feature Documentary – El Gouna Film Festival – El Gouna, Egypt – 2024

Début Status: Jordanian Première

Synopsis

Farah returns to Tripoli after decades away to care for her aging father, Mustapha. She finds a man deeply rooted in the past, and a city in the grip of crisis. Political instability and generational divides make communication difficult, but within their disconnect lies both humour and a quiet longing to understand. The emotional distance between them begins to close through his beloved poetry club — a bastion of tradition and masculinity. As Farah joins the circle, she tries to reach him through verse. Amid the 2019 uprising and Mustapha’s declining health, poetry becomes their shared language in an uncertain world.

Director’s biography

Born in Tripoli, Lebanon, Farah Kassem graduated from ALBA University with a Bachelor’s degree in Audio Visual Studies and completed a Masters of Fine Arts in documentary film-making at DocNomads. Farah is both a director and an editor and is currently doing doctoral research in the Arts at KU Leuven and LUCA in Belgium. She is also a film workshop trainer.

She has directed several award wining short documentary films that have screened at various international film festivals, including Visions du Réel, Warsaw Film Festival, DOK Leipzig, Dubai International Film Festival, and many others. We Are Inside is her debut feature.