This review of “Costa Brava, Lebanon” was first published July 14, 2022, before it opened in New York City.
Mounia Akl’s debut feature film “Costa Brava, Lebanon” is valiant filmmaking. Using the beauty of cinema to show the destruction of man’s cruelty to the environment is not just effective — it’s heartbreaking.
In a film landscape dominated by blockbusters, “Costa Brava, Lebanon” offers a reality check, reminding us that there are indeed concerns bigger than our own entertainment. It’s indie filmmaking at its most productive.
Set in Akl’s native Lebanon, whose political and environmental unrest helps drive the plot, “Costa Brava, Lebanon,” co-written with Clara Roquet (“10.000 Km”), draws us in with the charming Bardi family, who has gone off the grid. For eight years, husband and wife Walid and Souraya (Oscar-nominated “Capernaum” director Nadine Labaki) have lived in the mountains with their two girls — Rim (twins Seana and...
Mounia Akl’s debut feature film “Costa Brava, Lebanon” is valiant filmmaking. Using the beauty of cinema to show the destruction of man’s cruelty to the environment is not just effective — it’s heartbreaking.
In a film landscape dominated by blockbusters, “Costa Brava, Lebanon” offers a reality check, reminding us that there are indeed concerns bigger than our own entertainment. It’s indie filmmaking at its most productive.
Set in Akl’s native Lebanon, whose political and environmental unrest helps drive the plot, “Costa Brava, Lebanon,” co-written with Clara Roquet (“10.000 Km”), draws us in with the charming Bardi family, who has gone off the grid. For eight years, husband and wife Walid and Souraya (Oscar-nominated “Capernaum” director Nadine Labaki) have lived in the mountains with their two girls — Rim (twins Seana and...
- 7/21/2022
- by Ronda Racha Penrice
- The Wrap
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Kino Lorber has picked up North American rights to Costa Brava, Lebanon, a darkly comic tale set against the current political and environmental crises in Lebanon.
Mounia Akl’s directorial debut, which premiered in Venice’s Orizzonti Extra sidebar last year, stars actress/director Nadine Labaki (Capernaum) and Saleh Bakri (The Band’s Visit). Kino Lorber is planning a theatrical release for Costa Brava, Lebanon on July 15.
Aki’s intergenerational family story focuses on the free-spirited Badri clan, who, in an effort to escape the toxic pollution and social unrest of Beirut, build a mini-utopia off the grid. But the world intervenes when the Lebanese government begins construction on a garbage landfill right outside their fence. The country’s trash and corruption is literally being brought to their doorstep. The Badris are forced to either stay true to their ideals and live outside the...
Kino Lorber has picked up North American rights to Costa Brava, Lebanon, a darkly comic tale set against the current political and environmental crises in Lebanon.
Mounia Akl’s directorial debut, which premiered in Venice’s Orizzonti Extra sidebar last year, stars actress/director Nadine Labaki (Capernaum) and Saleh Bakri (The Band’s Visit). Kino Lorber is planning a theatrical release for Costa Brava, Lebanon on July 15.
Aki’s intergenerational family story focuses on the free-spirited Badri clan, who, in an effort to escape the toxic pollution and social unrest of Beirut, build a mini-utopia off the grid. But the world intervenes when the Lebanese government begins construction on a garbage landfill right outside their fence. The country’s trash and corruption is literally being brought to their doorstep. The Badris are forced to either stay true to their ideals and live outside the...
- 6/7/2022
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Mounia Akl’s long-awaited “Costa Brava, Lebanon” (2021) marks an impressive first feature. Eight different countries backed “Costa Brava”’s production, in addition to Akl’s own three completed residences at Cannes, Sundance, and Torino. The film’s international reception has also been warm. With a world premiere at Venice, a North American premiere at Toronto, and now a screening at Sffilm, “Costa Brava” ushers in Akl as an up-and-coming icon of Lebanese cinema. Crowds at home agree too: this film was recently selected as the Lebanese entry for the Best International Feature Film at this year’s Academy Awards.
The accolades are not unwarranted. “Costa Brava” masters the universal and the local at once. In this contemporary fiction, three generations of the Badri family reside in an idyllic mountain home. Though the location is picture-perfect, familial arguments bubble up beneath the surface. Grandmother Zeina (Liliane Chacar Khoury), ex-singer Soraya (Nadine Labaki...
The accolades are not unwarranted. “Costa Brava” masters the universal and the local at once. In this contemporary fiction, three generations of the Badri family reside in an idyllic mountain home. Though the location is picture-perfect, familial arguments bubble up beneath the surface. Grandmother Zeina (Liliane Chacar Khoury), ex-singer Soraya (Nadine Labaki...
- 5/4/2022
- by Grace Han
- AsianMoviePulse
What can you do when your homeland’s falling apart? The easy answer is stay or leave, but both options carry too much complexity to simply choose and be done. For starters, not everyone has that choice—whether due to finances, family, or myriad other reasons. And those who are able must dig deep within themselves to rationalize why. Do you leave because of greater opportunity? Do you stay because you want to be part of the solution? Or do you find yourself in a sort of purgatory—one foot planted on each side, only to discover your fear of losing out on the benefits of one for the potential of the other has you locked in stasis? That’s where Walid (Saleh Bakri) currently exists.
It’s where many citizens of nations dealing with desperate times find themselves, too. They don’t want to give up on home, but...
It’s where many citizens of nations dealing with desperate times find themselves, too. They don’t want to give up on home, but...
- 9/17/2021
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
“Where will we run away to this time?” asks Soraya Bakri (Nadine Labaki) of her husband Walid (Saleh Bakri), partly joking but mostly not, when what looks like all the trash in Beirut appears on their rural hideaway’s doorstep. Mounia Akl’s “Costa Brava, Lebanon,” is mostly a bittersweet dramedy built from an intimate, sprightly understanding of internal family dynamics, but it is fringed with the implicit melancholy of Soraya’s question. When she and Walid left noisy, polluted Beirut eight years prior to raise chickens, vegetables and two daughters on a little plot of land in the countryside, were they running-toward or running-away-from? And if living off-grid is your dream — or the dream of the one you love most — what do you do when the grid comes to you?
Dealing with an issue that locates it sometime during the 2015 Beirut Garbage Crisis, when the streets of the city were overflowing with uncollected trash,...
Dealing with an issue that locates it sometime during the 2015 Beirut Garbage Crisis, when the streets of the city were overflowing with uncollected trash,...
- 9/14/2021
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
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