In his first feature, Little Wars, Maroun Bagdadi, a 32-year-old Lebanese Christian consciously transcends the categories and clichés of "left" and "right," Moslem and Christian. He recounts a story and evokes a milieu illustrating the tragic course of the fratricide in Beirut, as well as the means by which people survive on a daily basis. A thriller and a love story, Little Wars stars Soraya Khoury as a woman who is unable to leave Beirut or to accept what the director calls "this trash heap of the Middle East today." Her movements in Beirut intersect with those of two compulsive characters, a daredevil news photographer and part-time drug dealer named Nabil and Talil Bey, heir to one of Lebanon's great feudal clans, a Beirut playboy until his father's kidnapping forces him to conform to his blood-inherited responsibilities. For showing great sympathy for the plight of the Moslem peasantry of South Lebanon in his documentary Story of a Village, as well as for the incongruity of his residence in the Islamic sector of Beirut, Bagdadi is considered in some quarters as a traitor to his Christian clan. As an erudite, educated Christian intellectual, he is a mistrusted "outsider" among Moslems and Palestinians.

-Tom Luddy (San Francisco Film Festival)


a 1982 French-Lebanese war film directed by Maroun Bagdadi.

Cast
Roger Hawa - Talal
Youcef Hosni - L'oncle de Soraya
Nabil Ismaïl - Nabil
Reda Khoury - La mère de Talal
Soraya Khoury - Soraya
Rifaat Tarabay - Selim

Directed by Maroun Bagdadi
Produced by Maroun Bagdadi
Written by Maroun Bagdadi, Kamal Kassar
Cinematography: Heinz Hölscher, Edward Lachman
Editing by Joële Van Effenterre
Music by Gabriel YARED

Starring: Roger Hawa

Country: France / Lebanon
Language: French, Arabic
Release date: 2 October, 1982
Running time: 108 minutes


Screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.

Screened at New York Film Festival on October 2, 1982.

Screened at San Francisco Film Festival 1983
http://history.sffs.org/films/film_details.php?id=2895

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"Little Wars" erzählt die Geschichte von drei jungen Libanesen und ihrer zunehmenden Desillusionierung während des Bürgerkrieges. Souraya möchte das Land verlassen, wird aber von ihrer Liebe zu Talal zurückgehalten. Talal gerät in einen Strudel von Gewalt und Vergeltung, als sein Vater entführt wird. Nabil, ein befreundeter Fotograf, wird immer zynischer und Menschen-verachtender.
Der Film hatte auf dem Internationalen Filmfestival von Cannes im Jahre 1982 Premiere.

Regie: Maroun Bagdadi, Libanon/Frankreich 1982, 108 Min., Arab. mit engl. UT