A family lives poorly in a village in the Lebanese mountain. One day the father abandons his family and leaves for Brazil, considered an Eldorado by a great number of his compatriots. Twenty years . The mother raised her children with great difficulty: the elder has a family and the younger one is getting ready to immigrate to Brazil. One day a ragged old man arrives to the village.
Toward the Unknown, Vers l'inconnu, Ila Ayn, Whither?, Nereye?, 去哪里？
Cannes Film Festival Cannes International Film Festival Grand Lyon Film Festival (Digitally Restored Version) Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival 
It reminded me both of the italian neorealism and indian cinema from the 1960's, mixing the best of each styles of cinema. A little bit raw on the narrative side, only exploring its themes on a surface level, but it compensates with its showing of lebanese culture.
Where To?, or Ila Ayn, represents an era of Lebanese cinema that is often forgotten. As a film, it has roots in neorealism, centering on poor realities and a story of emigration and family. It asks what is best for family and whether a man is best served working the land to raise his family or better off going abroad to find stability. The lead family watch their father leave, as they wave and shed tears of strength. What the film moves into is melodrama. It presents montages set to a dramatic score, underlining that this is not a subtle work. The characters take on a tiring life: farming, cleaning, cooking. But they also find love in the fields, a…
A film toiling in the ethnographic labour of the hillside. Struggle in the communal constraints of neorealism but with its ear to the comion of someone like Mizoguchi or Ophuls, in which the plight of man shifts the suffering of women into the shadow of their conquest.
As a film it often plays a decade older than it is, but as an expression it remains timeless. Modernity against tradition makes for entrapment of the common man, though Nasser positions emigration not as the guarantee of the promised land but the shedding of the burdens left behind. Leaving a town where men curse the crumbling walls and where women are forced to cobble them back together, their disarray an afterthought to sheer male determinism, the likes of which wanders many a decade lost with a bout of stagey melodrama festering in time's wounds.
A tragic disillusionist tale of emigration and subsequent family despair that highlights how dreams should not always be chased. Beautiful scenery and an enticing look into Lebanese culture accompany this slightly altered take on neo-realism, that while not perfect in of all around narrative or acting still provides plenty thought provoking sequences.
Even for its time this film is technically outdated, and for our time it definitely feels like it's a 100 years old, but all that doesn't matter because the themes are even more relevant today than they were at the time. This is mainly a film about emigration, a farmer, the father of a family in 1950s Lebanon decide to leave to Brazil to make a better life for his kids and wife, he leaves all behind and as a years by there is no news from him. Here the role of the mother is highlighted, the strong Lebanese woman carrying the entire family alone, she has to work the fields, take care of the household and her children…
|| رحلة حول السينما العربية ||
4- الجمهورية اللبنانية
الهجرة طريق كله شوك
أرضه جمر وسماه تراب.
الهجرة هي احد المواضيع التي تتكرر في العالم العرب ييحكي جورج نصر عن الجانب المؤلم من الهجر عن حكاية مظلمة استمرّت مع الآباء وصولاً للأبناء والأحفاد وعن الاحلام التي لم تكتمل بعد، يحكي جورج نصر حكاية باقية وتمتد حتى عصرنا الحديث عن موضوع واحد ومشابه لمواضيع عديده ومن خلال هذا الموضوع يقدر نصر صورة وطنه لبنان بعرض للفرح والحزن
والأمل والانكسار والحب داخل مجتمع صغير يعيش بين الجبال والوديان ، حكاية بسيطه لكنها تفي الغرض بعرض عاطفيتها وطبيعتها
As I put this film on, I realised just how little I knew about Lebanese culture, but Where To? was a brilliant cultural insight; a portrait not only of Lebanese traditions but also issues and attitudes. With the feel of Italian neo-realism, Nasser crafts a film that surprised me with its emotion and deftly-handled subject. It can feel a little propagandistic at times, but that is almost forgivable given its cultural relevence. A hidden gem, that, like all the best films, broadened my outlook and persprcetive.
La claridad puede ser —cuando es muy clara— una imposición. Ese es el caso, por ejemplo, de Where to?, un clásico libanés dirigido por Georges Nasser. Más que película Where to? es una advertencia: no migren. Tras la fantasía de una vida mejor se esconde una desgracia inacabable que rompe familias e individuos porque los separa sin siquiera cumplir las ilusiones de riqueza y aventura.
Aunque fundamentalmente es fácil estar de acuerdo con Nasser, la forma en que subraya su punto es insistente hasta el cansancio, por no llamarle moralizante e individualista. Resulta que no hay razones sistémicas influyendo la decisión de abandonar a la familia y el hogar por irse de bracero sino solamente el consejo mal planeado de un…
فيلم عربي يفتر القلب
محدش كان بيمثل
كأنه وثائقي لتلك العائلة التعيسة
الموسيقى التصويرية حزينة قاتمة لكن كانت سبب في متابعة الأحداث
كأنه صور
شوية صور ف ألبوم ذكريات
لعائلة حزينه
Georges Nasser's Where To? is a neorealist Lebanese drama with enough heart and strong storytelling to overcome some cheap production values. The film raises issues of generational relationships between parents and their adult children. Its climax is highly poignant, if slightly obvious in hindsight. I feel privileged to have stumbled upon a real hidden gem here.
Un cine que nace de la tierra. ¿Qué quiere decir eso? Pues una cámara que no sólo se fija detenidamente, sino que privilegia, una serie de cuestiones relacionadas con unas formas del ser que vienen casi determinadas por cómo se organiza el espacio y la vida en un lugar concreto. Por una serie de rituales, de fiestas, de representaciones. De fenómenos históricos y sociales característicos. No de acontecimientos concretos y actos heroicos. He ahí la identidad.
Por eso existe un Mizoguchi, un Dreyer, un Donskoi, un Renoir, un Parajánov, un Emilio Fernández, un Oliveira. Y continuando esa tradición, exactamente eso, apareció un destello en el Líbano en 1957. Como si el cine hubiese vuelto a nacer. O hubiese regresado a…
A movie that very effectively articulates the complicated processes of modernity and its influence on working-class Lebanese communities. of these towns wrestle with their connection to the land, and the demands of a globalised world. Too poor to stay put, not wealthy enough to successfully emigrate. For those that do head to the Americas, capitalistic economies are awaiting their undocumented, insecure labour, they thrive on this exploitation.
The city-based centralization of wealth and commerce leaves rural Lebanese communities in a vulnerable state. This vulnerability only makes emigration more attractive. Nasser contrasts two sons, one wishing to emigrate, the other firmly committed to his town. I think the gorgeous shots of the landscape, the beauty of cultural practices and the altruism of the local make this film lean towards the latter brother. In a way, it is a nationalistic film, though it shouldn't be reduced to this theme.
