Where Do We Go Now
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Where Do We Go Now?

A Film By Nadine Labaki

Opens New York & Los Angeles May 11, 2012

WINNER People’s Choice Award Toronto International Film Festival
OFFICIAL SELECTION UN Certain Regard Cannes Film Festival
WINNER Audience Award San Sebastian Film Festival

Synopsis

Set in a remote village where the church and the mosque stand side by side, WHERE DO WE GO NOW? follows the antics of the town’s women to keep their blowhard men from starting a religious war. Women heartsick over sons, husbands and fathers lost to previous flare-ups unite to distract their men with clever ruses, from faking a miracle to hiring a troop of Ukrainian strippers.

Directors

Growing up in Lebanon as a little girl, my childhood was synchronized between home and shelter. Living in a country adorned in politics, secular perturbations, and injustice, our lives evolved around continuous wars. Most of our days were spent in confinement behind sacks of sand. There were times when it was too dangerous to even leave our homes. We couldn’t go to school, we couldn’t go outside to play, and we couldn’t practice what normal childhood was.

Early on, I started developing a unique relationship with the TV screen. My only escape became this little box that projected these fascinating images that became my link to the outside world. It used to make me dream of a better life. My other escape was a tiny video store next to my house, where I spent hours choosing films that took me away from the bitter reality of my daily routine. I was so mesmerized that I soon realized that through a film I could build my own world, my own reality. I could create my own ending, live my very own fairy tale. This is when I decided at a very young age that I was going to become a filmmaker. I wanted to give people the same magic that had been given to me.

But when you live in a place where there is no film industry, and there is so much injustice around you, making a film becomes your cry for help. When you live in a country torn between eighteen political sectors, where brothers raised by the same mother, friends, neighbors can go from breaking bread to pointing rifles at each other within moments, because of political or religious differences, when you have witnessed the constant mourning of mothers throughout the twenty years of civil war, you can’t help but ask yourself, should I just stand there watching …powerless? I think of my own child. I think of his future. I picture him all grown up. Will he also, one day, walk past me carrying a weapon to the streets? What or who would he be fighting for? Who would he be aiming at? How far would I go to stop him from killing another mother’s son?

When you see politics and politicians failing in their mission to find a solution, you are pushed to take the matters in your own hands and to be political in your own way.

In my case I decided to make a film, believing that cinema can be one of the most powerful nonviolent weapons for change.

With every scene or idea that I wrote, I felt like I wanted to change the world, to express my frustration, my anger, my obsessions, my needs. I worked with actors that were not actors, ordinary people from everyday life, trying to be as close to the truth as possible. They spoke out the desire of every citizen to live in peace.

Film acted as our medium for change, to stand up for the injustice we see around us.

WHERE DO WE GO NOW? became our cry for help. Our hope for change. My message to my son. To all our sons.

Nadine Labaki

Bios

Nadine Labaki

Born in 1974 in Lebanon, Nadine Labaki passed her high school diploma in Beirut in 1993.

She received a degree in film studies at Beirut’s Saint-Joseph University (IESAV) where she directed her final end of year project, 11 rue Pasteur, in 1997. The film won the award for the best short film of the Biennale of Arabic Cinema held at Paris’ Institut du Monde Arabe (Institute of the Arabic World) in 1998.

Labaki then went on to direct commercials and many music videos for well-famed Middle Eastern singers, for which she was awarded several prizes in 2002 and 2003. In 2004, she participated in the Residence at the Cannes Film Festival where she finished writing Caramel, her first feature film which she directed in 2006.

Caramel was presented at the Director’s Fortnight in Cannes in 2007 and was a success in France in the summer of the year. The film was sold to many territories worldwide and Nadine went on a promotional tour of the film throughout 2008.

In 2009, she gave birth to her son and wrote the script to her second feature film, WHERE DO WE GO NOW?.

Claude Baz Moussawbaa

Claude Baz Moussawbaa was born in Lebanon in 1958 and had initial aspirations of following her chief flight engineer father’s path in the sky, but there weren’t any female pilots in the “Ceaderland”. WHERE DO WE GO NOW? is Claude Baz Moussawbaa’s first feature film. She describes her experience acting alongside and being directed by Nadine Labaki as “glorious”.

A loving wife and mother, Moussawbaa credits her daughter as the one who encouraged her to pursue her true destiny of acting.

Julien Farhat

Julien Farhat makes his feature film debut in Nadine Labaki’s WHERE DO WE GO NOW?. He has always had aspirations of being an actor and wanted to be in movies more than anything else. He would observe everything — movies, television shows, theater, concerts – but mostly how people behaved in ordinary, mundane situations.

Farhat discovered other skills including singing, drawing and painting as well as more physical activities. He played sports, went on extreme adventures, learned samurai sword fighting and practiced other forms of martial arts. Farhat attributes these passions to the development of his acting abilities. All the events and experiences of his life have converged in harmonious balance to make him what he is now and what he always wanted to be: an actor, in every sense of the word.

Cast

  • Claude Baz Moussawbaa
    TAKLA
  • Layla Hakim
    AFAF
  • Nadine Labaki
    AMALE
  • Yvonne Maalouf
    YVONNE
  • Antoinette Noufaily
    SAYDEH
  • Julien Farhat
    RABIH
  • Ali Haidar
    ROUKOZ
  • Kevin Abboud
    NASSIM
  • Petra Saghbini
    RITA
  • Mostafa Al Sakka
    HAMMOUDI
  • Sasseen Kawzally
    ISSAM
  • Caroline Labaki
    AIDA
  • Anjo Rihane
    FATMEH
  • Mohammad Akil
    ABOU AHMAD
  • Khalil Bou Khalil
    MAIRE
  • Samir Awad
    PRETRE
  • Ziad Abou Absi
    CHEIKH
  • Adel Karam
    BUS DRIVER
  • Oxana Chihane
    KATIA
  • Anneta Bousaleh
    SVETLANA
  • Olga Yerofyeyeva
    ANNA
  • Yulia Maroun
    TATIANA
  • Oksana Beloglazova
    OLGA
  • Fouad Yammine
    BOUTROS
  • Sami Khorjieh
    ABOU ALI
  • Gisèle Smeden
    GISELE
  • Georges Khoury
    YOUSSEF
  • Mounzer Baalbaki
    SASSINE

Crew

  • Nadine Labaki
    DIRECTOR
  • Anne-Dominique Toussaint
    PRODUCER
  • Cynthia Zahar
    SET DESIGN
  • Khaled Mouzanar
    MUSIC
  • Chrisophe Offenstein
    CINEMATOGRAPHER
  • Véronique Lange
    EDITOR
  • Gwennolé Le Borgne
    SOUND
  • Michel Casang
    SOUND
  • Caroline Labaki
    COSTUMES
  • Nadine Labaki, Jihad Hojeily, Rodney Al Haddad
    SCREENPLAY, WITH THE COLLABORATION OF
    Thomas Bidegain

Trailer