a generation breaking with the system

FRANCE 5 – SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28 AT 8:55 P.M. – DOCUMENTARY

It is with a cry of revolt, the one that Liliane launched at Emmanuel Macron as he walked the streets of the Gemmayzé district, on August 6, 2020, destroyed two days earlier in the explosion of the port of Beirut, that the documentary Lebanon, in the heart of chaos. The cry addressed by the young Lebanese of 24 years to the French president is that of a whole people to whom the coup de grace has just been struck, this August 4, by a corrupt and resigned political class, which has already plunged the country in a protean crisis, the neglect of which this time claimed the lives of more than 200 people.

When a year later the director Alfred de Montesquiou returned to the land of the Cedars, the chasm widened further: the Lebanese were suffocated by the economic crisis while their leaders maneuvered to evade their responsibilities and procrastinated in the implementation. implementation of the reforms necessary for the recovery of the country, blind to the chaos that is setting in.

By following in the footsteps of a generation which is fighting to save what remains of the country, like Liliane who has been involved in the political fight since the protest in 2019 and who refuses to leave like thousands of her compatriots , or who has no prospect but to try to survive like Ahmed, a young father of two from Tripoli facing unemployment and poverty, the documentary explores the five plagues at the origin of the Lebanese chaos: corruption , war, the resignation of the state, confessionalism and anarchy.

Educational process

Faced with this generation breaking with a breathless system, the director summons the main Lebanese officials, in power for decades. In response to the arguments they put forward in their defense, the French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, as well as the former United Nations special representative in Libya, the Lebanese Ghassan Salamé, made the bitter observation. state bankruptcy.

This bankruptcy is more visible than elsewhere in Tripoli, where the documentary ends. The Sunni metropolis of northern Lebanon concentrates all of the country’s problems: poverty and unemployment, water and electricity shortages, radicalization or the exile of a youth with no prospects for the future. In the stronghold of billionaire Najib Mikati, appointed prime minister in September after thirteen months of political deadlock, the same demands are expressed as elsewhere in the country in favor of a change in the political system. But the ensuing eruptions of anger raise fears that the situation is getting out of control.

In an educational approach, the story is punctuated with light on the confessional organization of the State and of society, the role of the armed Shiite movement Hezbollah which emerged in the confrontation with Israel and now strengthens its stranglehold on the State. , or the marginalization of Syrian refugees, who account for a quarter of the six million inhabitants of Lebanon.

For its sake of completeness, the documentary has the merit of placing the current crisis in the social, political and geopolitical complexity that characterizes the country of the Cedars, with however only touching the finger on some of the themes addressed.