Metrograph

Saab’s fiction feature debut, here in a sterling new restoration, is not without its own documentary aspect—shot amidst the devastation of the Lebanese Civil War and set during the 70-day Siege of Beirut, which appears in archival footage, The Razor’s Edge is a film about, among other things, art’s ability to act as a lifeline in even the worst of times, depicting the blossoming friendship between a middle-aged artist (Jacques Weber) and a teenage refugee (Hala Bassam) who has arrived in the city from the occupied south. Preceded by Lebanese, Hostage of Their City, in which Saab turns her camera on a city scarred by the bombs of an invading Israel in the 1982 Lebanon War.

The Razor’s Edge (Jocelyne Saab, 1985, 103 mins)

Lebanese, Hostage of Their City (Jocelyne Saab, 1982, 6 mins)

Distributor: Several Futures