Country: Lebanon
Language: Arabic
Directed by: Ghassan Salhab
Screenplay: Danielle Arbid
Cast: Carlos Chahine, Raia Haidar, Faek Homaissi, Raymond Hosni, Aouni Kawas, Roland Tomb, May Sahab
Cinematography by: Jacques Bouquin
Music by: Cynthia Zaven
Producer: Marie Balducchi
Production: Djinn House Productions
Distribution: Agat Films & Cie
Plot: Khalil (Carlos Chahine), a doctor who works at an hospital, is strangely linked to victims of a serial killer who leaves them without blood. Ghassan Salhab's The Last Man evokes the layers of the past that make up Beirut's sedimented present. Rather than approach history and politics head-on, Salhab's film does its work through an unlikely idea: a vampire is sucking the lifeblood from Beirut's citizenry, one victim at a time. A respected doctor, Khalil Shams (Carlos Chahine), whom we see scuba-diving in one of the film's many enigmatic and beautiful sequences, begins to suspect he himself is the vampire. Recoiling from sunlight, Dr. Shams explores the darker dimensions of a wintry Beirut (seen through Jacques Bouquin's stunning cinematography) as he increasingly questions his own capacity for intimate violence. Titled Ruins in Arabic, this dream-like film suggests Beirut as a city continually searching for ways to forget its past, all the while unable to stem the slow bleed of of history back into the City's consciousness.
Running Time: 101 minutes
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