Manal Issa, 2024

The Lebanese-French actress Manal Issa appeared in 2022 as French actress Maria Schneider in Maria Schneider, 1983 by Elisabeth Subrin. In that film, Issa reenacts a 1983 television interview in which Schneider was asked about acting and the film industry. In 2024, Issa answers the same questions, this time posed to her personally by Elisabeth Subrin.

Her stylistically refined short film is based on hours of emotional conversations between Subrin in the US and Issa in Lebanon. Issa has taken the decision to stop acting until there is a ceasefire in Gaza. She does not appear on camera in this film either. All we see is a burning cigarette, a cup of coffee, a telephone, and a vase of dried flowers in a café somewhere in Beirut.

Nor do we hear the questions, only the painfully honest answers. The oppressively empty space—she is there, and yet not there—was filmed with a static camera on 22 September 2024, just hours before the Israeli army intensified its bombing of Lebanon.