The Lebanese film Do You Love Me, directed by Lebanese filmmaker Lana Daher, screened recently as part of an event titled 'Talk to Strangers' at Aqeel Cinema in Dubai, taking audiences on a captivating cinematic journey into Lebanon's audiovisual memory through a unique structure built entirely on archival material spanning more than 70 years.
The film does not seek to present a conventional historical narrative or produce an official history, but instead constructs a collective memory from scattered fragments, images, and sounds.
Do You Love Me, Daher's debut feature film, is filled with moments of joy, love, and everyday life alongside scenes of war, destruction, and loss, making it a profound meditation on the meaning of memory and belonging, and on art's capacity to resist forgetting and to preserve what official institutions cannot.
The film began from a narrow idea centred on the artistic Bandali family and the song 'Do You Love Me', before evolving into an attempt to understand Lebanese memory, childhood, and identity. In this sense, the film's title embodies an ambivalent relationship with place — represented by Lebanon, and by Beirut in particular.
During the 'Talk to Strangers' event, media personality Ali Jaber said: "The film evokes a strange feeling — not the expected feeling of nostalgia, but a feeling of anger."
He added: "We Lebanese bear a great responsibility towards our country. We are the ones who have fallen short, and we carry a heavy responsibility in this regard. That is why this film brought us back to Lebanese memory."
For her part, Buthaina Kazim, founder of Aqeel Cinema, said that films are now accessible to audiences through the easiest of means, but that cinemas today carry a special importance because they are able to bring audiences together in front of a single screen, in a moment of collective viewing that generates creative dialogue and human connection.
She continued: "From our own experience, even though films are widely available, audiences are still hungry for other choices, programmes, and suggestions — ones they cannot reach on their own and always tend to overlook."
"The experience is completed with the selection of distinguished interlocutors capable of shedding light on different perspectives. With Do You Love Me, the audience met director Lana Daher and were able to get to know one another during the post-screening discussion."