Tramontane

by Vatche Boulghourjian

Liban, France

Director : Vatche Boulghourjian 

Script : Vatche Boulghourjian 

Photographer: James Lee Phelan 

Editing : Nadia Benrachid 

Sound : Rana Eid, Julien Perez 

Music : Cynthia Zaven 

Actors : Rabih Barakat Jabbour, Samar Julia Kassar, Wissam Michel Adabashi, Hicham Toufik Barakat 

Production : Rebus Film, Abbout Productions, Le Bureau 

 

Distributor :  

Year : 2016

Screening : 2023

DCP, Color, 105 mn, OV arabic SUBFR

Critic's Week Cannes 2016

Rabih, a blind, young singer, is invited with his choir to give a concert in Europe. While filling out the forms to get his passport, he finds out that he is not the natural son of his parents. It's a lie which draws him into a quest across Lebanon, in search of his identity. His journey draws, the portrait of a country devastated by conflict, unable to tell its own story. Rabih cannot see and those around him are incapable of the introspection needed to analyse their traumatism. The aim of Vatche Boulghourjian, born into an Armenian family who fled the genocide in 1915 for Beyrut, “was to make a film which encourages positive critical exchange and which can improve our mutual understanding... at a time when the force of circumstance is fashioning borders and our lives... The subject also found an echo with foreign producers who were convinced of the universality of the theme. We wanted this film to be made because we all felt its urgent, humanitarian character.”