Lebanese Film Festival in Canada Marks Ten Years of Cinema, Memory and Diaspora

By Tahani Elghazaly
Published May 25, 2026

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The festival opens with “A Sad and Beautiful World” by Lebanese director Cyril Aris, presented as a Quebec premiere. The film has built a notable international festival journey, including appearances at Venice, London and Palm Springs, and has received several awards across its global run. Aris is expected to attend the Montreal screening and take part in a post-screening conversation with the audience.

This anniversary edition will also welcome a number of Lebanese and Canadian guests. Lebanese actor Yorgo Chalhoub will attend as part of the festival’s programming around “Nohad Al Chami,” linking contemporary Lebanese screen culture with a wide audience in the diaspora. Director Walid Mouaness will join the festival around the screening of “1982,” while Montreal filmmaker Chris Lavis, Academy Award winner for Best Animated Short Film for “The Girl Who Cried Pearls,” will also be part of this year’s program.

The 10th edition gives special attention to the late Lebanese filmmaker Maroun Baghdadi through two works that renew his presence in the program. “Little Wars” revisits one of the major works in Lebanese cinema and its deeply human reading of the civil war, while “Maroun Returns to Beirut” looks back at his career, vision and enduring relationship with the city.

The program also includes “The Third Rahbani,” a documentary opening a window onto the musical, artistic and cultural legacy of one of Lebanon’s most important creative families. “Do You Love Me?” adds a more intimate and emotionally charged layer to the program, using archive, Beirut and visual memory to explore the traces left by modern Lebanese history.

The festival’s 10th edition is not limited to feature-length works. It will also host filmmakers presenting short films, with audience discussions following several screenings. These encounters remain central to the festival’s identity, turning the event into more than a sequence of screenings and extending the experience into conversation, reflection and cultural exchange.

In Montreal, the festival will take place across several important cultural venues, including Cinéma du Musée, Cinéma du Parc, Alliance Française de Montréal and Théâtre Outremont, before continuing toward Laval and Saint-Eustache. Through this movement across cities, Lebanese cinema reaches a wider Canadian public and builds bridges between Lebanese narratives, the diaspora and audiences discovering these stories in one of Canada’s most culturally diverse urban spaces.

The anniversary edition also highlights the long-standing support of the Consulate General of Lebanon in Montreal, which has been connected to the festival since its early years. The relationship is presented not only as institutional support, but as a shared commitment to strengthening Lebanese cinema and maintaining a living connection between Lebanon and its audiences abroad.

Behind the red carpet and public screenings is a year-round process of programming choices, conversations with filmmakers, partnerships and detailed coordination. The 10th edition reflects that invisible work, bringing together a team, artists, partners and volunteers united by a commitment to present Lebanese cinema as a living art form that preserves memory, asks questions and renews the bond between Lebanon and its audience in Canada and beyond.