The Brother

Director’s statement

Two old brothers living together in an apartment inherited from their mother. They never speak to each other. This true story haunts me. Although discord surrounding inheritance is not uncommon, it raises existential questions. Why, in the face of peril, do humans embrace a primitive condition? Clearly, the story of The Brother relates to an imposing element of the history of Lebanon – it represents a mise en abyme by describing the malaise of an entire people, its troubled past, its multiple conflicts and its civil wars. I am reminded of a text by W.M. Thomson, a Protestant missionary who described Lebanon in a strangely topical manner in writings that recount his routine trips dating from the 1830s. The same discord. The same animosities. Is this repetitive echo a curse, or merely human nature? This is how the idea of this film was born in me. Pushing a case study to its paroxysm; destroying the Other, a fellow man, is essentially an inevitable destruction of the Self. A modern-day Cain and Abel tale.