Lana Daher | UNIT 125 (working title)

I will be researching and developing my second feature film, “UNIT 125” (working title), rooted in the south of Lebanon, where I am from. Its form is still open, moving between documentary and fiction, the ordinary and the uncanny.

My research begins with a forensic reading of the evacuation maps of Beirut’s southern suburbs, sent to civilians during the last wars. They show buildings seen from above, marked in red, minutes before they were bombed. My grandmother’s home was on one of those maps.

From there, it moves south to the lines redrawn around the Litani River by the Israeli Occupation Forces, marking where people could no longer return, and to its Shia communities, so rarely seen from within. I am interested in the attachment to political and spiritual leaders, what the loss of one leaves behind, and what we hold on to: the persistence of staying.