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THE SECRET GARDEN

Nour Ouayda
Lebanon, 2023
27 min.

The inhabitants of a city awake one morning to find that never-before-seen trees, plants, and flowers suddenly erupted throughout the streets and in the squares. Strange and mysterious events start taking place as Camelia and Nahla investigate the origins of these new and peculiar creatures.

The Secret Garden is an eight-chapter story reminiscent of Abbas Kiarostami’s quatrains. Visually, the film carries the poetic nonchalance of the Iranian director’s poems, to which a quest-like narrative is attached. Within the story, the mysterious plants that appear out of nowhere and the search for their origin seem to come as an extradiegetic response to the generic authors’ sensitive observations that turn vegetation into a passive object meant to be contemplated. The story in The Secret Garden, an ingenious counterpoint to its visual montage, is a perfect example of a form of storytelling within a culture that is more accustomed to oral tradition than to figurative representation. (Emil Vasilache)

Data proiecție și locație

Wednesday, 27th of September | 18:00

Cinemateca Eforie, Strada Eforie 2
Cumpără bilet

Premii și festivaluri

Nour Ouayda

Nour Ouayda is a filmmaker and film programmer. Her films experiment with various forms of fiction writing in cinema. She is a member of The Camelia Committee with Carine Doumit and Mira Adoumier and part of the editorial committee of the Montreal-based online film journal Hors Champ. Between 2018 and 2023, she was deputy director at Metropolis Cinema Association in Beirut where she managed and developed the Cinematheque Beirut project.

  • Technical sheet
  • Production and distribution
  • WRITTEN BY: Nour Ouayda & Carine Doumit
  • EDITING: Carine Doumit
  • SOUND DESIGN: Kinda Hassan
  • NARRATORS: Liwaa Yaziji & Leila Ghandour
  • SOUND LIBRARIES: Tatiana el Dahdah & Ghassan Salhab
  • VOICE OVER RECORDINGS: Khyam Allami & Ziad Moukarzel
  • COLOR GRADING: Chrystel Elias
  • PRODUCED BY: The Camelia Committee

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