Lebanese filmmaker Ghassan Salhab is the guest of honor at the 21st edition of the Guanajuato International Film Festival and will have a tribute paid to him today, from the Main Garden at 20:15 hrs, with a lavish parade you can’t miss.
The celebration, filled with colors, mojiganagas and music, will follow a carriage that will drive our guest of honor through the streets of the beautiful city of San Miguel de Allende for the audience members to enjoy.
Though he was born in Dakar, Senegal, Salhab’s life has also unfolded in Lebanon and France. This implies three cultures, three languages and, of course, three cinemas that influenced a unique style. His life experiences are reflected in his art, where he offers a vision of constant strangeness. The human tragedy of Beirut has nurtured his sensibilities. The atmosphere of the Lebanese capital has stimulated in his imagination the possible reaches that a context like that could have in cinema.
With films like Phantom Beirut, Terra Incognita, 1958 and Al-Wadi, his cinema defined by multiculturalism casts a look toward the enormous value of a conflict in a nation that has been deeply affected by sectarianism. His ability for ingenuity and playful moods with which he takes on narrative structures offers clever questions on ever-relevant topics such as identity, geography and fugacity, as well as renovating forms of expression.
The Guanajuato International Film Festival is honored to award the Lebanese filmmaker with the Silver Cross, recognizing his contributions to building a cinema that is linked to the harshest realities of the human condition as well as defy the limits of the what can be done with narrative filmmaking.