Ismai

Loved this,what fascinating city it seems Beirut,Lebanon <Baalbek...the Lebanese people...Great film,good actors...beautiful actresses!!

A great movie belonging to the seventh art with its pillars as Existensialism, neo realism and nouvelle vague.

Exquisite cinematography.

Very real representation of the lost sfter war geneartion searching and hoping for truth and simple life.

The director had a special talent to show the relections of the past and the future and the struggle between the present and the unknown future of a society damaged by a broken past.

The metteur en scene is describing outstandingly the non heard voices of a promised future.

A must watch .

It reminds us of the outstanding debut of the great Lebanese Cinema with th the great Gary Garabedian.

This movie is told through a series of flashbacks, which become tedious after a while. The story is not well told as there is little in the way of context or character development. The scenes are not well interconnected so there is a huge loss of continuity. After a while, one loses interest and starts to fast forward to try and get to the meat of the matter and move the story along. It made sense to cut losses after about 30 minutes as to watch the whole movie would have been time wasted, time one would never get back!

After the new Lebanese movies production rush, And after watching more than four Lebanese movies that were released in the past 12 months, I was starting to lose hope. I went to watch "Ismaii/Listen" with the lowest expectations possible... And I was shocked by it, positively... I can't but start with the sound! For a movie that mostly focuses on sounds, the sound in it does not disappoint... the sheer amalgam of sounds is enough for one to watch the movie for a second time, with one's eyes closed... I say a second time, because the first time, one wouldn't want to miss the breathtaking visuals! Another forte of the movie... The story is not one of those conventional fake love stories that the Lebanese movies often present... And the young characters do resemble the real Lebanese youth one meets in the streets of Lebanon, not the Botox filled, shallow, material social climbers, other movies portray... The scenario was natural, and straight to the point... not filled with nonsense just for the sake of filling the silence... and working amazingly hand in hand with the various sounds! The switches between the present and the flashbacks is appealingly subtle! And the actors were able to convey a lot of emotions with their implicit facial expressions instead of just being too explicitly vocal and recite useless jabbers like other Lebanese movies often do... If you're there for a light comedy movie, this is not what you should watch... But if you want to see a movie that leaves a trace after it's over, then "Ismaii" is surely the Lebanese movie to watch in 2017.

So much could have been done with this, because the plot line is interesting. Alas, when the lead male "actor" is about as expressive as a wall, it is hard to sympathize with his quest, let alone find it convincing. A mug can act better than that, even if it may not look as pretty on camera.

Almost everyone at the theater was laughing at the "cliche" lines, the poorly-written dialogue taken from an old Arabic dictionary and some book of proverbs and outdated expressions, the wooden vs exaggerated acting, etc. Even the sex scenes lacked emotion and were poorly directed ; but I think it is the first Lebanese movie that dares to produce any, so a thumb up for that.

The only thing that really saved this film was the excellent sound effects and the decent coloring, and it is not surprising, considering the post-production was handled by none other than The Postoffice.