Randa Chahal Sabag facts for kids

Randa Chahal Sabbagh (Arabic: رندا شهال صباغ) was a talented film director, producer, and writer from Lebanon. She was born on December 11, 1953, in Tripoli, Lebanon. Her mother was from Iraq, and her father was Lebanese. Randa Chahal Sabbagh passed away from cancer on August 25, 2008, in Paris, France, when she was 54 years old.

Awards and Recognition

Randa Chahal Sabbagh received several important awards for her work. These awards showed how much people appreciated her films and her contributions to cinema.

Major Honors

• National Order of the Cedar (Officer), a special award from Lebanon, given in 2003.
• Nestor Almendros Prize, awarded in New York City, in 2000.

(You can find out more about her individual film awards below.)

Her Film Career

Randa Chahal Sabbagh started her career making documentary films. These are films that show real-life events and people. By the 1990s, she began making feature films, which are longer movies with fictional stories. Even when she made feature films, she always had a special skill for finding interesting and sometimes challenging topics, just like a documentary filmmaker would.

She once said that in her films, the camera often moves from right to left, just like Arabic writing. This was a unique way she connected her filmmaking style to her heritage.

Being a Film Festival Judge

Randa Chahal Sabbagh was also asked to be a judge at the 64th Venice International Film Festival. This is a very famous film festival where new movies are shown and judged. She helped decide which films were the best in the "Opera Prima" section, which focuses on first-time directors.

Her Films

Les Infidèles (1997)

Les Infidèles is a drama film from 1997. It tells the story of a French diplomat and a former Islamist. The former Islamist agrees to share information about his friends if the French government will release a friend who is in prison.

Civilisées (1999)

Civilisées (which means "A Civilized People") was released in 1999. It is a black comedy about the Lebanese Civil War. A black comedy uses humor to talk about serious or dark subjects. The Lebanese Civil War was a very sad time that caused many deaths.

In this film, Sabbagh used many different kinds of characters. These included foreign servants, people who helped others, Lebanese people living abroad who came to visit, soldiers, and criminals. The story was not always easy to follow, and it mixed funny and strange parts, like a play. About 40 minutes of the film were cut out because some people thought it was "obscene" or showed Lebanon in a bad way during that difficult time. Because of this, the film was only shown once at the Beirut International Film Festival.

The Kite (2003)

Randa Chahal Sabbagh became very well-known in 2003 because of her film The Kite. This movie won the Silver Lion at the 2003 Venice Film Festival, which is a very important award. It also won several other big prizes and was praised around the world.

The film is set in a quiet village in southern Lebanon. It tells a story about love, life, death, and the strange situation of the Israeli occupation. The story is seen through the eyes of a Druze family. Their village is split in two, with one half becoming part of Israel.

The main part of the story is about an arranged marriage between Lamia, a 16-year-old Lebanese Druze girl (played by Flavia Bechara), and her Israeli Druze cousin (played by Maher Bsaibes). The drama happens near the Israeli-Lebanese border, where guards watch over things. One of the guards is played by the famous Lebanese musician and actor Ziad Rahbani.

The kite in the film is used as a symbol for love and for life near the border. The movie explores, sometimes with humor, what brides mean for families that are separated and, sometimes, for countries that are divided.

Later Project

In 2005, Chahal began a new film project with Elie Samaha, a well-known Lebanese-American film producer from Hollywood. The film was going to be called Too Bad for Them. It was planned to mix comedy, music, dancing, and even talk about politics and differences between rich and poor areas. However, this film was not finished or released before she passed away.