For a Few Lives

For a Few Lives (1976) by Jocelyne Saab is a tense, political, and intimate chamber piece. Saab follows Raymond Eddé, a Lebanese presidential candidate who stands as a figure of integrity. In the midst of the chaos of 1975–1976, he searches for the missing persons, whoever they may be: Christians, Muslims, Druze. Saab attempts to film a “righteous man,” or what remains of one, in a country stripped of its bearings. It is a desperate yet clear-eyed quest, an attempt at redemption in the face of a collective morality in total collapse. This is not an action film, but a film of gestures, of waiting, of faces, and of the dead restored to their dignity. What matters here is the trace, the memory, the attempt to save a few lives—or at least their names. Saab captures the war without ever showing it head-on, letting it resonate in the silence of absent bodies.

What strikes me first is the voice-over, which immediately transports me back to my childhood. In these voices from wartime documentaries, there is a very specific intonation, typical of francophone journalism of the era: a way of pronouncing, of narrating, that activates multiple layers of memory and awakens an intimate echo in each of us. This voice-over embodies all the stories of collapse.

Chantal Partamian
Filmmaker and archivist