2016 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

An ode to Lebanon’s youth. The manifesto script is inspired by both the frustration and the hope of Lebanese 18 to 24 year olds. Being the 90’s post-war generation, these young people are the fruit of many years of obedience, to parent and society rules and expectations, uneasy to follow given Lebanon’s corrupt situation. The film begins by showing the childhood journey of the Lebanese youth, the things they had to go through, leading up to them revealing the change they want to create, by simply being given the freedom to create who they are. While they cite “History doesn’t have to repeat itself”, a group of young people stands on Lebanon’s most toxic sight, the trash mountain, the result of the old generation’s incompetence and corruption, which happens to be the only sight of Beirut’s full skyline.

Creative Execution

When producing “The Makers”, our main goal was to recreate the Lebanese youth’s lifestyle in a real yet dreamy way. The use of the handheld camera and almost-voyeurism techniques is meant to give the film a cinema verite, “real-feel” effect, taking the audience through “the life of The Makers” in an uninterrupted sequence of images. Because in every scene or vignette there was a story to be told, the handheld movement had to accommodate the actions and scenery to deliver the message. The overall visual feel of the vignettes and camera movement is designed to be coherent for the purpose of storytelling, accommodating the era of each vignette, its situation, and the emotion it holds. The 2-day budget was stretched over a period of 5 days in order to shoot all outdoor scenes during magic hours only, while Beirut’s skyline was shot from never-before-seen angles.