After Father’s professionadapted by Jean-Pierre Améris in 2020, The Fourth Wall is the second novel by Sorj Chalandon, war reporter and multi-award-winning novelist, to be brought to the screen. Signed by David Oelhoffen, this moving film is released in theaters on Wednesday January 15.
1982, Georges arrives in Beirut to implement the dream of his old Greek and Jewish friend, Samuel, prevented by illness. The challenge is significant: it is a matter of climbing Antigone by Jean Anouilh in Beirut, in the middle of the war, on the front line, with actors from all the communities who kill each other on a daily basis in Lebanon.
After convincing all parties (Palestinians, Phalangists, Shiites, Druzes), Georges, accompanied by his guide Marwan, embarks on this adventure full of traps to avoid.
But while rehearsals have barely begun, the war begins again. Georges, in love with Imane, the Palestinian teacher, finds himself entering into a fratricidal conflict that he does not understand.
After The Last Mena film released this year already devoted to the theme of war, David Oelhoffen this time takes on the novel by Sorj Chalandon, published in 2013 and winner of the Goncourt prize for high school students, which plunges us into the heart of the war in Lebanon in the early 1980s.
This complex war, which focuses on multiple issues and numerous protagonists, is told here through the crazy project of a theater enthusiast, a utopian convinced that art can reconcile people.
Georges, “little theater of patronage” as he describes himself in Sorj Chalandon’s book, sees himself, to honor a promise to his friend, thrown into an adventure which causes his life to take a radical turn. He is played by Laurent Lafitte, unexpected in the role of this man launched into an adventure that he did not choose to live, but in which he will engage with all his soul.
In a sober but energetic staging, close to reporting, with a camera permanently attached to the action, David Oelhoffen manages to restore this mixture of lyricism and realism which characterizes the prose of Sorj Chalandon, a great reporter who turned to fiction.
“When I entered the Sabra and Chatila camp in 1982, I did my job as a journalist, I wrote for the newspaper, and then I collapsed (…) This moment when I broke down, where I cried because I’ve seen too many dead children, it can’t be in a newspaper, it can only be in a novel”confided the writer in an interview with franceinfo Culture.
The strength of art, of theater, of fiction, is at the heart of this adventure, of this somewhat crazy dream of wanting to reconcile the irreconcilable through an artistic project, here theater. “Here, you cannot delude yourself with politics. Here, you have to delude yourself elsewhere,” underlines one of the actorsAntigone.
Worn by the duo Lafitte/Abkarian et by the troupe of actors and actresses who surround them, this film recounting this attempt to “poetic truce” just before the massacre of Sabra and Chatila, in strong resonance with recent events in Gaza and Lebanon, takes us by the throat.
General public with warning. An extremely violent execution scene showing a man massacred against a backdrop of war-related atrocities is particularly harrowing for sensitive audiences.
Genre : Drama
Director: David Oelhoffen
Actors: Laurent Lafitte, Simon Abkarian, Manal Issa
Pays : France
Duration :1h 56
Sortie :January 15, 2025
Distributer : The Pact
Synopsis : Lebanon, 1982. To respect a promise made to an old friend, Georges goes to Beirut for a project as utopian as it is risky: to stage Antigone in order to steal a moment of peace in the heart of a fratricidal conflict. The characters will be played by actors from different political and religious camps. Lost in a city and a conflict he does not know, Georges is guided by Marwan. But the resumption of fighting soon calls everything into question, and Georges, who falls in love with Imane, will have to face the reality of war.
