Mikhael’s role is unambiguous, although the full meaning of his affiliations will be clearest to locals who retain definite associations with his Tanzim militia as well as the people mentioned, such as notorious commander Elie Hobeika.
Of course, this collective amnesia has its origins (or better, its accelerant) in the civil war. However, as Mikhael points out, each community has become increasingly partisan: Sunni villages remain Sunni, Maronite Christians oppose sales to “outsiders,” and the memory of a time when Muslim neighbors protected the monastery in Kobayati (aka Al-Qoubaiyat) is practically forgotten. Wooded slopes are dotted with towns and villages, which Raheb films year-round, capturing fields of wildflowers in spring and snow-covered valleys in winter. In their absence, what remains is a sense of emptiness that elides with the general state of loss suffusing the territory.Īt a glance, the Akkar District appears to be an idyllic locale, boasting Lebanon’s largest and most pristine forest. Yet his wife left him (for reasons never said), taking their four children, so the new house becomes a tangible symbol of hope’s determination against all probability. A Christian with longstanding ties to the terrain, he has a sheep farm and apple orchards and is personally building, stone by stone, a large house with restaurant for himself and his family. Raheb immediately introduces her main subject, Haykal Mikhael, but only gradually adds pieces to the puzzle. “Those Who Remain,” by its very title, is about the land, in this case in Lebanon’s northern Akkar District, adjoining Syria and composed of Christian, Shia, and Sunni towns. Knowing that total objectivity is a lie (Lebanon’s unique history has taught at least that), she seeks a greater truth by skillfully revealing as much as possible, not just of her immediate subjects, but of their environment, without feigning either omniscience or invisibility. Raheb’s approach is all the more refreshing because she refuses to pretend that her presence doesn’t interfere: We hear her asking questions, and note her subjects’ awareness of the camera. Winner of Dubai’s Special Jury Prize, the documentary deserves a bright festival future. “ Those Who Remain” movingly provides specificity with broader implications, focusing on a tenacious older man clinging to his family land in the north, where sectarianism has blotted out memories of a more amicable past. The accumulation of personal stories can sound generically similar, which is why it takes such an exceptional filmmaker as Eliane Raheb (“Sleepless Nights”) to offer fresh perspectives that restore the uniqueness of each experience while acting as a broader cry for reconciliation - even when the director herself obliquely questions whether rifts have become too great to heal. There are so many documentaries from Lebanon about the civil war and its consequences that critiques inevitably end up bandying around the same words: scars, open wounds, futility, sadness.
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