Venice Award Winner Ahmad Ghossein on Absurdist Comedy ‘The Side Effects of Trusting Life’ and War in Lebanon: ‘People Want Topics From Us, Not Cinema’

Five years after his feature debut “All This Victory” took the Grand Prize and the audience award at Venice’s Critics’ Week, Lebanese filmmaker Ahmad Ghossein is gearing up to shoot his next film. The filmmaker’s sophomore effort, “The Side Effects of Trusting Life,” was selected as part of this year’s Thessaloniki Film Festival’s Agora Crossroads Co-Production Forum, where it took the Midpoint Consulting Award.

“The new film is challenging because of what is going on in Lebanon but I wrote it before it all,” Ghossein told Variety, referring not only to the current war with Israel but the turmoil the country has faced in the last five years. “In 2019, Lebanon collapsed completely — economically, politically and socially. It was an example of how capitalism and the new liberalism failed. If you want to look at the banking system and how it is failing worldwide, just look at Beirut. That image was very strong and I found myself in survival mode, which inspired the dark humor.”

“The Side Effects of Trusting Life” follows Lama, a young woman who starts having hearing issues due to panic attacks following the loss of her job during the Lebanon economic crisis. Medically advised to avoid anxiety-inducing situations, she moves back to her native village but is quickly thrust back into Beirut and into the heart of an ever-spiraling sequel of maddening events. The film will be produced by Lebanon’s Abbout Productions and co-produced by Germany’s Twenty Twenty Vision Filmproduktion and Norway’s DUO film.

In his director’s statement, Ghossein says that Lama, like him, “becomes powerless after losing her job, witnessing the city’s deterioration while others seek an escape. In Beirut, nothing works—there’s no electricity, water or money. We are prisoners of that incapacity.” According to Ghossein, the film will be “heavily choreographed” and offer viewers a tangible insight into the chaos of this fictional Beirut.

After making a film about the Hezbollah-Israel war with “All That Victory,” Ghossein vowed “never to make a film about war again” but couldn’t turn his eyes away from the situation in his home country. “The reality is that two months after I left Venice, the revolution started, then COVID, then the war, so I didn’t have the space to digest what was going on. We need time as filmmakers and we need space. I need to live to write.”

With the conflicts between Lebanon and Israel still escalating, the director isn’t entirely sure he is “ready” to begin his next film. “The situation is still so intense and sometimes you feel like making films is not important. If you ask me now: is cinema important? No. There is a war in my country. The priority is to help people.”

“People want topics from us, not cinema,” Ghossein continued while reflecting on the expectations placed upon Arab filmmaking, particularly at times of conflict. “They want social drama stories, they see us as subjects. They want to see a Middle East that the West understands.”

“Cinema is an international language but you have this pressure because, in the end, the money is coming from Europe,” Ghossein went on. “Things are changing in the Arab world, we have a lot of co-productions and new funds and grants, but there is still no freedom. Nowadays there are producers in the European market who want to understand more, even if the word ‘understand’ makes me a little angry.”

Of taking his latest project to Thessaloniki, Ghossein said there is a natural synergy between Greece and Lebanon and he is glad to collaborate with local partners who grasp the minutiae of working on Arab projects. “The Side Effects of Trusting Life” will reunite Ghossein with the Greek editor of “All This Victory,” Yannis Chalkiadakis, plus the filmmaker is open to the idea of shooting Greece for Beirut.

“Greek producers offered to shoot the film here if we weren’t able to shoot next year,” said Ghossein. “But if there is a war in Lebanon, I am not going to shoot anything because I cannot shift my focus and film in Greece as if nothing is happening in my home country. It’s impossible.”

The director said a co-production is still highly desirable because there are “grants, rebates and producers interested in working together.” A possible solution would be to shoot half the film in Lebanon and half the film in Greece, but, although Ghossein is open to the possibility, he is saddened to have to move production away from home. “A space will tell you something, it will talk to you in a different way. In the end, I am loyal to the space and to my country.”