The Razor’s Edge (1985)

Jocelyne Saab | France, Lebanon | 1985 | 102 min | PG13 (Some Mature Content and Violence) A teenager wanders Beirut dreaming of love and life. War has ravaged the city but also sparks her unlikely bond with an older artist. 15-year-old Samar is a refugee in Beirut, roaming its streets surrounded but unfazed by the reality of war. Defiantly carrying dreams of love and freedom, her curiosity and imagination stand in contrast with the city’s ruins, fighters and children playing at soldiers. By chance or prescience, she meets Karim, an older man painting in a grand pink house, and forms an unusual but tender connection that threatens to fall apart with this fraught world. Filmed during Lebanon’s long civil war, The Razor’s Edge deftly weaves stark documentary footage with lush imagery in a meditation on memory and place. Taking bold leaps into the poetic and theatrical, it asks what is left for art and desire to do in absurd and horrific times.