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Built from old-fashioned sensibilities that serve as both assets and deficits, Oualid Mouaness’ empathetic “1982” feels as though it could have been made during the titular year in which it’s set.
Mouaness’ time-honored approach is to contrast the sweetness of a first crush with the ageless shock of lost innocence. His hero is 11-year-old Wissam (Mohamad Dalli), a student at a Quaker school in the Lebanese mountains above Beirut. As the day begins, Wissam is determined to express his long-hidden feelings for classmate Joanna (Gia Madi). But he still has several obstacles to overcome, including his own shyness, the disapproval of adults around him, and the fact that Joanna’s best friend Abir (Lelya Harkous) is the class tattletale.
There’s also the fact that his imminent announcement has coincided with the start of the 1982 Israel-Lebanon War. For most of the day, the kids don’t even notice the ominous rumblings outside and overhead.
Mouaness’ time-honored approach is to contrast the sweetness of a first crush with the ageless shock of lost innocence. His hero is 11-year-old Wissam (Mohamad Dalli), a student at a Quaker school in the Lebanese mountains above Beirut. As the day begins, Wissam is determined to express his long-hidden feelings for classmate Joanna (Gia Madi). But he still has several obstacles to overcome, including his own shyness, the disapproval of adults around him, and the fact that Joanna’s best friend Abir (Lelya Harkous) is the class tattletale.
There’s also the fact that his imminent announcement has coincided with the start of the 1982 Israel-Lebanon War. For most of the day, the kids don’t even notice the ominous rumblings outside and overhead.
- 6/9/2022
- by Elizabeth Weitzman
- The Wrap
Before 2007, all Lebanese men were conscripted to serve in the military for at least one year. I’ve heard from multiple people that it wasn’t a question of citizenship, but ethnicity. If I ever visited before that year, I wouldn’t have been able to return to America without fulfilling that obligation. Whether or not this was actually true—I’m not certain. But even if it wasn’t, all the children born there during a lengthy civil war against Syrian occupation and an eventual Israeli invasion would. So it’s not enough to just watch Oualid Mouaness’ 1982 as a portrayal of futility. Beyond living through a reality that your home was under siege by two foreign parties, many of these kids would be forced to join the fight as well.
It’s crazy to think this truth manifests overnight, but that’s exactly how wars of this nature start.
It’s crazy to think this truth manifests overnight, but that’s exactly how wars of this nature start.
- 9/8/2019
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
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