Maya runs the streets of Beirut in a wedding dress, chased by militiamen who've captured her best friend Zena, rebellious and wild at heart. The two young girls are interrogated, but upon news of the liberated South, they are set free. In the chaos of post-war Beirut they live like there's no tomorrow.
The city is being rebuilt and memories of the war erased, however; the burden of bloodshed does not evaporate easily and eventually Maya collapses from its weight.
To pursue better lives, the girls move to NYC only to be confronted with the 9/11 attacks. In a time of pain and suspicion the two friends are torn apart. In solitude, Zena begins to have visions of Asmahan, the great diva who will guide her through Maya's mysterious past lives; a legacy of women and violence.
Zena returns to a Beirut in turmoil as Maya discovers her cancer, fighting for her friend's life under the bombs of the 2006 war. Maya will tragically loose her battle, leaving Zena alone with her demons. Beirut is drowning and so is Zena, but only in the depths of Maya's beloved sea will she find the strength to live, as her destiny is to tell their story.
A woman never dies in a wedding dress.

by Gigi Roccati and Zena El Khalil
Italy, Lebanon

Producer: Marta Donzelli (Vivo Film)


script & intention

When I first read Zena's memoir I thought it was the best portrayal of my generation I had ever come across. Global, compassionate, urgent. While reading I was imagining the film, a metaphorical bridge between East and West. A universal story of love between two best friends, on the line of prominent conflicts, in the dusk of the second millennium. The story of Zena and Maya is told in three crucial moments of their lives and friendship; the style of the film matches the point of view of the characters through the subjective eyes of Zena. Youth is a time of fast changes, so is the rhythm at the beginning of the film; colourful, like their coming of age. But the euphoria of liberation soon shows consequences on Maya's sensitivity to the violence around them.

The pace of the story changes in the devastated beauty of Hasbaya, where Maya experiences her first breakdown, announcing the worst to come. After their decision to move to New York City, their world turns dark and lonely after 9/11, the two "Arab students" feel exiled. And finally, their loss of innocence, and the bleached tension of their adult age during the "July war" of 2006, while Maya fights her diagnosed cancer and Zena remains in a surreal and deserted Beirut under the bombs, to share her last days. The film inherited a key from the book that becomes a stylistic approach to the visuals: in Beirut you live like there is no tomorrow, because you could not be alive the next day. The idea is to describe this aspect of life by blurring the lines between reality and dreams, in what could be defined as a sort of "magic realism". In the story, Maya has a strong connection to Asmahan, the great Arab diva murdered during WW2. Asmahan will take Zena on a journey to understand Maya's pain through multiple dream sequences into Mayas's cycle of reincarnations; a legacy embracing three generations of women living the wars of their time.

During the film we intend to include documentary sequences, either to reveal the internal feelings of the protagonists through the colours of unforgettable memories like the original home movies from Maya's family, or to contextualize the events with black and white amateur images of war-torn Beirut and hand held video footage of the 2006 war. Beirut eventually becomes a character of its own. I think that this film should give no answers, but rather open questions to disclose the layers of humanity behind the story. Against the ever-present threat of war are Zena, Maya and Beirut.

production company
VIVO FILM SRL.
Via Giovanni Antonelli, 41
00197 Roma, Italy
T +39 06 8078002
F +39 06 80693483
martadonzelli@vivofilm.it
www.vivofilm.it

co-producers
Batoota Film (LEBANON)

total production budget: € 1.500.000
current financial need (at 2011): € 1.200.000


Source:
www.torinofilmlab.it/project.php?id=90