July Trip

Armed with a Krasnogorsk 3 (a wind-up camera from the Soviet era), a few 16mm reels and a crack pipe, Waël Noureddine travels from Paris to his native country to save Beirut. The film he made is as raw, chaotic and ugly as the war it depicts. Nouredinne captures a country devastated by war. While foreign journalists in bulletproof vests and helmets are orating in front of the smouldering ruins of a recently bombed apartment building, neighbours and bystanders jump to the aid of the survivors and carry off the dead. The international media appear to have little compassion for the afflicted Lebanese civilians. Photographers swarm mutilated victims in the hope of shooting an award-winning photo. Meanwhile, Nouredinne films someone carrying an old man as the last living soul from a building and takes him on his back. Back home, the filmmaker listens to the radio, where a conceited voice says: "This is all your own fault." With his friends, he escapes reality by means of different drugs. July Trip is a bad trip. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)