November 2013
Al Beqaa, Lebanon
In November, Lebanese director Ghassan Salhab was busy with his crew, filming 'The Valley', the second film in his triptych inspired by long suffering in Lebanon's modern history, which he compares to feelings of an eminent apocalypse. The film was shot on a vine farm in Al Beqaa region on the border with Syria.
In this video interview, Salhab talks of his conceptual approaches to filmmaking in general and in relation to 'The Valley' which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2014.
Ghassan Salhab was born in Dakar, Senegal, and teaches film at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts. Along with several short films, his features as writer-director include 'Phantom Beirut' (1998), 'Terra incognita' (2002), '1958' (2009), and 'The Mountain' (2010), which screened at the Festival. The Valley (2014) is his latest film.