Directed by Dima Mabsout

I wanted to make a film. In six months, I had to make a film. I wanted it to be about the protests I had captured in Beirut in the summer of 2015, but they died out before I could develop my idea. About my encounters with the flower kids who I spent every single night with inhabiting the streets of Hamra. But what was I trying to say? That our city is their playground, that they knew every alley like none of us did. To me, like the protests, their existence was a rebellion. But how can I praise their rebellion when something deep within me was trapped in darkness?

I accepted the invitation to dig inward, there was something I needed to face. This film will be my emancipation, I thought. This is an opportunity, I hoped, to look my addiction straight in the eye and destroy it. I struggled but I shared. I felt vulnerable but there was no turning back. I kept pushing, and it was painful. I finally found answers in an archive of footage I had forgotten. Each moment, each experience, represented a state of mind that I was coming to terms with. The more I constructed, the more I was cured. For one month straight as I was editing, the vicious cycle had disappeared. I took a deep breath. I felt restored. But just as I was nearing the end, I was sucked back in. I finished the film, and I had failed.

This is a story of acceptance, resistance, recovery, and relapse. It did not fulfill my promise, but instead marked a beginning. Now, as I write the synopsis one year later, I know that I am almost there.

Thank you Bidayyat and to all those who were there on this journey.