NEI CAMPI DI BATTAGLIA

1983, Beirut. Twelve-year-old Lina finds a friend in the 18-year-old Siham, her old aunt’s maid. In a precarious wartime existence where passion and frustrations overshadow everything, Lina hides and encourages Siham’s clandestine love affairs while Siham shows Lina what her life could be like.

Sounds of bombs do little to deter the desiring bodies of adolescents in Danielle Arbid’s sensual look at coming of age in 1980s Beirut. In tender imagery of electric blue eyelids and sultry car backseats, cinematographer Hélène Louvart is as attuned as ever to the quivering contours of girlhood.