Octopus is screening on Thursday, February 2 at 7PM for a suggested donation of $15 or $7.

Maysles Cinema presents Octopus, a metaphysical exploration of the Beirut port explosion aftermath.

Karim Kassem, 2021, 64 min.

A filmmaker arrives to work on his new film and is faced with a colossal explosion that changes his life and what he can do for himself and his city.

Composed as a series of wrenchingly impressionistic portraits, Karim Kassem’s IDFA-award-winning masterpiece captures Beirut’s stillness and pain in the aftermath of the city’s devastating 2020 port explosion. “It’s not a film about resilience,” said the director in an interview. “It’s a film that speaks more of survival, of the quest for oneself.” Reflecting the impossibility of articulating such loss, the film unfolds wordlessly (with a beautiful score), offering images instead of explanations, and privileging sensation over narrative.

“This film develops its own imagistic language: a language of mystery and loss in the aftermath of a tragedy. It was made with great respect toward the subject matter and it felt like a story told from the inside. There are no answers presented, just the questions of life in the face of a disaster.” - IDFA Jury

Thanks: Karim Kassem, Nadia Hassan