AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD

Suspended between a brutal past and an uncertain future, the battered city of Beirut exists in a fragile but perpetual present tense. In the aftermath of his father’s death, Nadim Mishlawi creates a memoir that mixes his own story with a city also haunted by loss. Looking past Beirut’s history of war and political upheaval, After the End of the World views the city in a subtler and more stimulating way. The Beirut on-screen is an uncanny urban experiment, constantly undergoing cycles of destruction and reconstruction that repeatedly leave it bruised and disfigured as ruins of the recent past are replaced by the next influx of modernity. By analysing the city from so many perspectives – cultural, architectural, historical, social and especially human – Mishlawi explores the knowledge and history these old spaces can hold and, most importantly, what happens when they are erased.