Homegrown movies expand

Lebanese film audiences grew steadily over the last two years, with a quarter of all movie tickets sold being for local productions. This growth in demand is driven by a larger number of movies being produced locally, as well as an improvement in the quality of those films.

PRODUCTION ON THE RISE

Homegrown productions sold 905,000 movie tickets last year, up from 230,000 in 2014, according to, Regional Sales and Distribution Manager at Grand Cinemas. Since the Syrian crisis began, a large number of Syrian actors and filmmakers relocated to Lebanon and passed on their expertise to their local counterparts. “This mutual experience has contributed in improving the quality of homegrown production,” said , Head of Logistics and Project Management at Eagle Films. Cinemas showed 22 local commercial and art house films in 2018, and the same number in 2017, increasing from 15 films in 2016. Eagle Films produces two films per year, to be shown in winter and spring. “We are planning to increase the films produced per year to three, due to the increasing demand,” Salameh said. Homegrown movies are popular with audiences, especially comedy films, which are dominant, Fahed said. The Jury Prize given to Nadine Labaki’s ‘Capernaum’ at Cannes gave the film massive publicity at home and abroad. The movie was also nominated for an Oscar. Ziad Doueiri’s 2017 production, ‘The Insult’, was also nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category last year.