Do You Love Me

“In Lebanon, contemporary history is not taught in schools,” reads the opening line of DO YOU LOVE ME. This impressive debut documentary by Lana Daher—a multidisciplinary artist from Beirut—is a visual and musical journey through Lebanon’s history, constructed entirely from footage sourced from over 20,000 different archives. A unique achievement in a country without a national archive.

The film is a playful, deeply personal love letter to Beirut that spans seventy years of cinema, television, and home videos. Daher lays bare the Lebanese collective psyche, where joy and intimacy constantly alternate with devastation and loss. Through the eyes of citizens and artists, she reconstructs a fragmented history and celebrates creative expression as a vital form of resistance.

Lana Daher’s work balances between documentary and fiction by bringing different eras into dialogue with one another. With this powerful, archive-based essay film, she demonstrates the impressive results this approach can yield.