Taste of Cement

Story

DOCUMENTARY More than one million people have fled the war in Syria to Lebanon. Many of them work on building sites constructing skyscrapers in Beirut, while on the other side of the border their own houses lie in ruins. At night, they’re locked in on the site as there’s a curfew for refugees. Cut off from their home country, every evening they gather in front of a TV set to get the latest news from Syria. Ziad Kalthoum’s formally rigorous and finely composed film offers a visual translation of the feeling of living in exile without the chance of returning to a world torn apart by war, a translation that will long remain in the memory.

Director

ZIAD KALTHOUM (*1981) was born in Homs in Syria. He studied film and made two documentaries in Syria before fleeing via Lebanon to Berlin in 2012. His third feature-length film Taste of Cement won the main prize at the renowned documentary film festival Visions du Réel in Nyon.

Trailer