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Mizna presents a retrospective screening series celebrating the recently restored works of Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab. Join us at the Main Cinema on July 8, 2026 for a screening of The Razors Edge and July 15, 2026 for a screening of Saab’s Beirut Trilogy.

WHERE: The Main Cinema, 115 SE Main Street
Minneapolis, MN 55414
WHEN: July 8 and July 15, 2026 at 7pm

Tickets are pay-what-you-can, $5 minimum. 

Direct donations will be encouraged at each screening to ​​benefit the Ghassan Abu Sitta Children’s fund, dedicated to providing medical attention to children who need it the most and helping to relieve the medical sector in Palestine and Lebanon. DONATE NOW.

July 8, 2026 at 7pm
The Razor’s Edge (1985, DCP, 102m, Arabic, w/ English Subtitles) dir Jocelyne Saab
TICKETS

Presented in a new 4K restoration, Jocelyne Saab’s narrative feature, set amid the Lebanese Civil War, tells the story of a passionate teenager who forms a (mostly) platonic bond with an older abstract painter.

As a filmmaker known primarily for her documentary work, Jocelyne Saab’s The Razor’s Edge is one of her few narrative features. The film tells the story of platonic love between a young refugee from southern Lebanon and a painter depressed by the ongoing Lebanese Civil War. Through its story and characters, the film traverses spaces that have now disappeared, taking viewers into corners of Beirut not often shown in films made during the conflict. Presented in a new 4K restoration, The Razor’s Edge merges narrative structure with astute documentary precision to display the social impacts of violence on Lebanon during the war.

A Several Futures release. Presented in partnership with Several Futures and Metrograph. Additional screenings are being held in other cities–stay tuned for more info. 

July 15, 2026, at 7pm
The Beirut Trilogy ft. Beirut, Never Again (1976, 35min), Letter from Beirut (1978, 52 min), Beirut, My City (1983, 38min) dir Jocelyne Saab
TICKETS

The Beirut Trilogy comprises three landmark works of Lebanese cinema by photo-journalist and documentarian Jocelyne Saab. Trained as a radio and television journalist, Saab turned her attention to documentary films at the start of the Lebanese Civil War. Saab’s commitment to and intimate interactions with the displaced, the exiled, and the dispossessed, mark her films and her quest to capture Beirut as uniquely her own.

Programmed by Mizna. Screening in collaboration with the Film Society’s program Lumières Françaises. A Several Futures release. 

Beirut, Never Again (1976, DCP, 35m, French w/ English Subtitles) dir Jocelyne Saab
Every morning, when the nightly battles between militias have ceased, Jocelyne Saab roams around Beirut’s city center filming traces of daily life. Gunfire and song mix with a poetic voiceover written by the Lebanese writer and painter Etel Adnan. The city of Beirut has become a place where everyone, even children, have become soldiers, looters, and scavengers. Yet life persists.

Letter from Beirut (1978, 52m, DCP, French w/ English Subtitles) dir Jocelyne Saab
Three years after the beginning of the Civil War, the filmmaker returns to her city for several months. Living between Lebanon and France, she tries to readapt to daily life in Beirut. Saab wanders the streets of the irrevocably changed city, rides buses, chats with refugees and peacekeepers, and reflects on the war’s toll during a brief moment of peace.

Beirut, My City (1983, 38m, DCP, French  w/ English Subtitles) dir Jocelyne Saab
Considered by Saab to be her most important film, Beirut My City returns Saab and her collaborator, the playwright and director Roger Assaf, to the shell of her 150-year-old childhood home following Israel’s July 1982 invasion. She films the aftermath of the Israeli siege, even capturing the intimate farewells as members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization withdraw from Beirut. The sound of Israeli jets are constant, yet Saab finds glimmers of hope and solidarity amidst the chaos.

PARKING