Patrick Perrault, a photo-journalist covering the war in Beirut in the late 1980s, is himself caught up in the hostilities when one day he is picked up and bundled into a car at gun-point. Blind-folded, he is taken to an unknown location where he discovers that he is being taken hostage by Lebanese guerrillas. Robbed of his passport, stripped and forced to change into a pair of damp pyjamas, he is locked up in a cell from which there is no escape. And he is told that if he takes of his blindfold to see his captors he will be shot dead immediately. So begins his long and brutal nightmare..

Director: Maroun Bagdadi
Script: Maroun Bagdadi, Didier Decoin, Elias Khoury
Photo: Patrick Blossier
Music: Nicola Piovani
Cast: Rafic Ali Ahmad (Walid), Nidal Al-Askhar (Khaled's Mother), Hassan Farhat (Ahmed (Frankenstein)), Hippolyte Girardot (Patrick Perrault), Habib Hammoud (Ali'Philippe'), Sabrina Leurquin (Isabelle), Majdi Machmouchi (Moustapha), Hamza Nasrallah (De Niro), Hussein Sbeity (Omar)

Country: Belgium / France
Language: French
Runtime: 97 min
Aka: Out of Life

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Der Film erzählt die Geschichte eines französischen Reporters, der von Milizionären entführt und lange in Geiselhaft gehalten wird. Das Schicksal eines Einzelnen findet hier eine Parallele zu dem Schicksal der Stadt Beirut, die von Gewalt und Brutalität gefangen gehalten wird.

Out of Life (Hors la vie)

Regie: Maroun Bagdadi, Libanon/Frankreich, 1991, 97 Min., Arab/Franz. mit engl. UT

Der Film gewann 1991 den Preis der Jury auf dem Festival in Cannes.