Forced to leave West Beirut while civil war is tearing the country apart, a teenager moves with his mother and sister into a cramped bungalow at a seaside resort. In the suspended time of war, everything becomes unreal. The bungalow blocks, the beach, the swimming pools, the concrete … all of it an obsessive setting for a bitter paradise, deserted in winter and bursting with life in summer. In this ungraspable reality, friendship, escape, and the first stirrings of desire remain possible. Against a backdrop of violence – latent at first, then omnipresent – young bodies test their limits and take shape. Encompassing war and everyday life, adolescent lucidity and naïveté, Chant balnéaire (Seaside song; Allia, 2023) is a collage of sensations that immerses us in the awakening of a body and a language, fashioned both by exile and the tragedy of fratricidal conflict.
