Tripoli / A Tale of Three Cities

Raed Rafei / Lebanon / 2024 / 88 min / English subtitles
Saturday Oct 4 / 13.30 / Slakthuset – Graffitisthlm – Hallvägen 5

Director Raed Rafei has been living abroad, but returns to his hometown Tripoli with a microphone in hand to speak to the city’s inhabitants. He strikes conversations about their cultural and social beliefs and their willingness to embrace new ideas in the face of a deep economic crisis, a faltering revolution and in anticipation of a devastating war. Eventually, he meets a group of marginalized individuals whose lifestyle contradict the norms in this religiously and socially conservative city. Together they discuss the complicated relations one forms with a hometown in crisis and through an undeniably queer lens, Rafei explores how Tripoli has (and hasn’t) changed since it once rejected him as a queer child.