Light Dox has acquired sales rights to Lana Daher‘s documentary “Do You Love Me,” which has its premiere in Venice Days, a sidebar to the Venice Film Festival. Variety debuts an exclusive clip.
“Do You Love Me” is “a playful and personal journey through Lebanon’s audiovisual memory,” composed entirely of archival footage. It is a “love letter” to Beirut, spanning 70 years of film, TV, home videos, and photography, “exploring the Lebanese collective psyche – marked by joy and intimacy, destruction and loss.” Through the eyes of citizens, filmmakers and artists, the film “reconstructs a fragmented history in a country without a national archive, celebrating creative expression as both resistance, renewal and a way to preserve memory.”
Daher said: “Beirut is home. It is a city suspended in the in-between: between violence and endurance, fragility and renewal. It carries a strong sense of identity and perseverance, yet an equally deep vulnerability. Living here means navigating extremes, again and again. ‘Do You Love Me’ is a reflection on Beirut today. By reinterpreting fragments of films, songs, and photographs, I hope to distill this city’s layered reality – its memory, resistance, joy and tenderness – and give these images new life, opening a space to explore, remember, and simply feel.”
Anna-Berthollet of Light Dox said, “Lana Daher’s debut is not only a poetic love letter to Beirut, but also a profoundly moving meditation on memory, resilience, and collective identity. Crafted entirely from archival footage, the film transforms Lebanon’s fragmented history into an experience that is both intimate and universal.”
Jean-Laurent Cinidis, the film’s producer, said, “Producing Lana Daher’s ‘Do You Love Me’ has deepened my sense of what cinema can mean.”
The film was written by Daher and Qutaiba Barhamji. It is produced by Csinidis at Films de Force Majeure in France and Daher at My Little Films in Lebanon. It is co-produced by Wood Water Films in Germany and Studio Lemon in France.
The film’s website is here.