A Guest Without A Host Is A Ghost

The Ugly One, narrated by Masao Adachi, follows a couple in Beirut coping with the loss of their child to a terrorist act. Featuring stunning photography of the city’s beaches and ruins, the film’s confusion of memory and place begins as a slightly stilted meta-textual exercise and builds to a work with political and emotional urgency. Part love affair, part political tale, half-documentary and half-fiction, the film is also a confrontation between two generations of politics and filmmaking, exploring the question of militancy and regret. As a backdrop are political impasses that are mirrored by the narrative impossibilities upon which The Ugly One is built.


With an introduction by Lotta Schäfer. This film will be screened again on 17 June at CIC.