THE ONE MAN VILLAGE wins at HOT DOCS
Habre’s ‘Village’ wins top prize
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Helmer Simon El Habre’s “The One Man Village,” about the last inhabitant of a Lebanese village destroyed during the civil war, continued its successful fest circuit run by scooping Hot Docs’ international feature prize and C$10,000 ($8,700) on Friday.
North America’s largest annual nonfiction fest, confab and meet, which ended Sunday, handed out 10 awards and over $52,000.
El Habre’s doc focuses on his uncle, Semaan El Habre, who is the only person living in Ain El Halazoun, in the mountains above Beirut. After being besieged by Christian and Druze militias during the 1975-1990 civil war, the village became a ghost town as the inhabitants moved away and the buildings were destroyed or fell into disrepair.
Simon El Habre’s THE ONE MAN VILLAGE (Semaan Bil Day’ia) was awarded Best International Feature Documentary at Hot Docs in Toronto.
The Jury were: John Greyson, Filmmaker; Cara Mertes, Director of the Documentary Film Program, Sundance Institute; Esther van Messel, CEO, First Hand Films
The next festivals for THE ONE MAN VILLAGE are Arab Film Festival Rotterdam; Edinburgh International Film Festival; International Film Festival Split; Yerivan Golden Apricot Film Festival. The theatrical openings in Germany and Lebanon are scheduled for September 2009.
Content:
Semaan is leading a quiet life on his farm in the small village Ain el-Halazoun in the Lebanese mountains. The hamlet was completely emptied and destroyed in combats during the civil war in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990. Today, many years after an official reconciliation, its inhabitants which are all from one family regularly go back to the village to cultivate their plots of land or visit their houses and always leave before sunset.
In his comforting and humorous film Simon El Habre observes the life in his quasi ghost village and tries to reflect on the collective and individual memory in a country that seems to live in a collective amnesia and is vulnerable to a new civil war.
Simon El Habre, Lebanon 2008, 86 min, digital, Arabic with subtitles
Film website: http://www.theonemanvillage.com
World sales: http://www.mecfilm.de
