Programmer's Note

Where Do We Go Now? opens on a sombre note: a funeral procession comprised of women carrying photographs of men moves in a stylized manner on a dirt road towards a cemetery. At the graveyard, Muslims and Christians part ways. The film’s closing sequence returns to that very spot, but now the procession carries the coffin of a young man. At the gravesite, the crowd does not separate, but rather stops, circles and asks: “Where do we go now?” Set in the Lebanese countryside, in a village isolated because of the landmines buried all around it — the morbid legacy of a conflict that has claimed so many lives — Nadine Labaki’s second feature is at once sobering, comical and uncanny.

As the looming spectre of strife threatens to seep into their village again, Amale (Labaki), Takla (Claude Baz Moussawbaa), Afaf (Layla Hakim), Yvonne (Yvonne Maalouf) and Saydeh (Antoinette Noufaily) are determined to protect their families from more violence and grief. To distract the men from succumbing to antagonism, they hatch schemes with zeal, beguiling the men with a cast of Ukrainian casino showgirls and serving hash cookies at a dance party. From one plot to the next, these women defy conventions and taboos — until a young man’s accidental death from crossfire outside their village calls for a more radical and decisive tactic.

After the runaway success of her feature debut Caramel (a Festival Gala in 2007), Labaki gracefully incorporates solemnity and clairvoyance, stylization and irreverence, choreography and heartwarming simplicity. Khaled Mouzanar’s original music and songs underscore the film’s vivacious wit, and the cast — peppered with professional and nonprofessional actors — delivers charmingly genuine performances. Where Do We Go Now? offers new twists on thematic motifs widely addressed in popular Lebanese musicals from the sixties, revisiting questions familiar to the country’s postwar cinema with refreshing and unflinching lucidity.