TO CLOSE YOUR EYES AND SEE FIRE

TO CLOSE YOUR EYES AND SEE FIRE

Film talk with the directors Nicola von Leffern and Jacob Carl Sauer

The film was awarded two prizes at the Max Ophüls Preis film festival:

Award for Best Music in a Documentary - HVOB

Film Critics' Award - Best Documentary

Beirut lies in ruins. But even after the explosion in the city's harbor, the world keeps on turning. But how do you clear up the rubble when there is much more to it than just a disaster? And how do you regain faith in a better future? TO CLOSE YOUR EYES AND SEE FIRE is a dense mosaic that portrays a wide variety of people and their lives after the tragedy: A telephone operator who works at the city's help line. A Syrian family living in an underground parking garage and planning to flee the country. And a dancer and a painter who are trying to come to terms with their fate in an artistic way.

"To Close Your Eyes and See Fire is a portrait composed of fragments that tells of the collective trauma at the moment of the historic economic crisis into which Lebanon plunged in 2019 and which continues to dominate the country. Memory, absence, grief and protest form a new reality of life, as insights into the everyday lives of Aya, Selim, Yasmin and Mohammad's family reveal. Voices from afar are interspersed between the intimate snapshots: international television stations report on rising poverty, calls for protests spread online, cell phone videos of the explosion find their way incessantly into the present. The simultaneity of proximity and distance is painfully present in everyday life among the ruins: the urgency to leave Lebanon contrasts with the longing to stay and demand change. Between all the incompatibilities: an embrace, the view over the rooftops of Beirut and the desire to feel, to mourn and to be able to move." - DIAGONAL 2025