Fragments of a silent rebellion part 6: Everything is Connected
Storytelling is my metaphysical act of weaving broken memories into living threads. From Beirut rooftops to vegan kitchens, I trace unseen connections between animals, refugees, machines—and us. My films, ethics, and activism are one practice: refusing hierarchies, choosing compassion, and holding space where opposites meet. Liberation is indivisible; until every form of life is honored, I’ll keep filming, cooking, and loving—frame by frame, seed by seed.
Fragments of a silent rebellion part 5: Teaching from the Margins
Teaching was never a career plan—it was a calling. After navigating life on the margins, I couldn’t ignore the others still stuck there. I teach not to fix, but to reflect, to walk beside my students as they discover their voices. At the Beirut Film Center, we didn’t build an institution—we built a home, where craft meets consciousness, and where education becomes liberation. In every workshop and conversation, I carry the quiet belief that we can reimagine the systems that failed us—and create spaces that truly see us.
Fragments of a silent rebellion part 4: Stories as Resistance
Filmmaking is not just a craft but a language of survival, resistance, and healing, an urgent, intimate act of witnessing that transforms silence into meaning and invisibility into presence.
Fragments of a Silent Rebellion Part 3: The Quiet Rise
I was never the rebel shouting from rooftops. Mine was a quieter defiance—one that refused to be erased. Written off early, I wasn’t failing—I was just learning in ways no one could measure. While others memorized answers, I chased the questions no one thought to ask. I didn’t just absorb knowledge—I transformed it. Over time, my silence turned into substance, my curiosity into clarity. I became known not for volume, but for depth. Not for rebellion, but for reinvention. What began as survival became mastery—and I emerged not loud, but undeniable.
Fragments of a Silent Rebellion Part 2: The Diagnosis That Named Me
I wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia until I was sixteen. By then, the damage had already been done not just by the condition itself, but by the silence surrounding it. In post-war Lebanon, things like learning differences weren’t discussed… they were dismissed, denied, shamed. Mental health was taboo. Neurodivergence had no language. You were either “smart” or “stupid,” and I had been labeled the latter more times than I could count.
Fragments of a Silent Rebellion Part 1: The War That Raised Me
I was born in 1977, two years after the Lebanese “Civil” War erupted and thirteen years before it officially “ended.” But for me, it never really did. It just changed form. The warlords who tore the country apart became our political leaders. The militias traded fatigues for suits. And the systems of violence mutated into economic exploitation, social hierarchies, sectarian conditioning, and everyday corruption. There was no reconciliation, no justice, no reckoning. Just a quiet, national agreement to forget. A false peace built on unspoken wounds. A collective amnesia that I could never abide with.
