European film funds love a specific kind of cinematic tragedy. They swoon over the displaced filmmaker stands before a panel, explaining how their homeland is "impossible to film," and proposing to recreate the bullet-holes and bullet-train energy of a war-torn or economically devastated city right in the middle of a pristine European capital.
We saw it again with the coverage surrounding Danielle Arbid’s project, Seuls les rebelles, where the narrative spun by cultural critics was entirely predictable. The consensus was bathed in romanticism: Arbid is "importing Beirut to Paris," executing a heroic act of artistic resistance because the real Beirut is too fractured, too expensive, or too dangerous to capture on celluloïd. Read more on a connected issue: this related article.
This is a lazy, patronizing myth.
The idea that you can clone the soul of a Levant metropolis in the back alleys of the 19th arrondissement isn't just technically flawed. It is an aesthetic cop-out that sanitizes the very displacement it claims to mourn. Further analysis by Rolling Stone highlights comparable views on the subject.
The Myth of the Impossible City
Let’s dismantle the premise that Beirut cannot be filmed.
Every year, local Lebanese filmmakers, working with microscopic budgets and zero state support, manage to shoot raw, vital cinema on the actual streets of Hamra, Achrafieh, and Bourj Hammoud. They navigate the rolling blackouts. They negotiate with local factions. They deal with the real, suffocating weight of the post-2020 economic collapse. Look at the gritty realism of Ely Dagher’s The Sea Ahead or the tense domestic friction in Mounia Akl’s Costa Brava, Lebanon. These directors didn't pack their bags for France to find Lebanon; they stayed in the dust.
Saying a city is "impossible to film" usually means one of two things: either the director has lost touch with the logistical reality on the ground, or Western co-production treaties made it financially irresistible to spend the budget in France.
When a film is funded by French regional funds like the CNC, the money comes with strings. You have to spend a massive percentage of that capital on French soil, hiring French crews and using French post-production facilities. Wrapping this financial reality in the flag of artistic exile is disingenuous. It turns a budgetary constraint into a false badge of martyrdom.
The Architecture of Distortion
You cannot substitute Haussmannian stone for Levantine concrete and expect the subtext to survive.
Cities are not just backdrops. They are living political ecosystems. Beirut's architecture is a messy, traumatic archive of Ottoman expansion, French colonial mandates, civil war destruction, and predatory postwar real estate speculation. The physical space dictates how people move, how they look over their shoulders, and how the light hits a balcony at 4:00 PM.
When you transpose that narrative to Paris, even with meticulous production design, you change the DNA of the story. Paris has its own rigid, heavily policed spatial politics. The moment you frame a Lebanese character against a Parisian backdrop—even while pretending it’s Beirut—the camera captures the order, wealth, and institutional weight of Europe. The chaos becomes performative. It turns into an exotic simulation designed for consumption at film festivals in Cannes or Berlin.
I have watched production companies spend hundreds of thousands of euros trying to make a European studio lot look like the Global South. They bring in the right dirt. They hire the right extras. They artificial-age the walls.
The result is always sterile. It feels like a museum exhibit.
The Festival Industrial Complex Wants a Safe Rebellion
Why does the European film industry reward this? Because it satisfies a specific ideological craving.
The festival circuit loves "rebellion," but only when it is safely packaged within European borders. A film about Lebanese alienation shot entirely in Beirut feels too alien, too localized, or too structurally frustrating for a casual Western viewer. But a film about Lebanese rebels shot in Paris? That bridges the gap. It allows European audiences to feel politically engaged while keeping the aesthetic familiar, comfortable, and fundamentally Western.
This creates a dangerous double standard for filmmakers from the diaspora:
- The Local Purist Trap: If you stay and film in difficult conditions, your technical quality might suffer from power outages and lack of gear, causing festivals to reject you for being "unpolished."
- The Diasporic Simulation: If you move to Europe and simulate your homeland with a massive French budget, you are praised for your "universal vision," even if the film lacks genuine local texture.
This dynamic doesn't democratize cinema. It gentrifies it. It ensures that the definitive stories about complex Middle Eastern realities are filtered through the logistical apparatus of Western Europe.
The Hard Truth of Cinematic Transposition
To be fair, there is a legitimate way to make a film about displacement. But it requires honesty.
If a character is in exile, the camera must acknowledge the exile. The friction of being a Lebanese body in a cold French landscape is inherently dramatic. The mistake happens when directors try to trick the audience, using Paris as a chameleon to avoid dealing with the logistics of shooting in a crisis zone.
Cinema is a medium of truth. When you fake the geography, you almost always end up faking the emotion. The audience might not know the exact street layout of Beirut, but they can sense the artificiality of a controlled environment. They can feel the lack of real ambient noise, the absence of unpredictable street life, and the tailored safety of a French film set.
Stop clapping for the logistical acrobatics of bringing Beirut to Paris. Start questioning why European funding structures make it so difficult for filmmakers to leave that money where it belongs: on the ground, in the hands of local crews, supporting the actual infrastructure of a city that is fighting to keep its own image alive.
