Do You Love Me

Daher, L. (Director). Csinidis, J., et al. (Producers). (2025). Do You Love Me. Icarus Films. 75 mins. Do You Love Me opens by informing the viewer that, in the following film, “the narrative…moves back and forth through time…[t]his disorientation is part of the journey…welcome to Lebanon.” It’s a fair warning. Nevertheless, by stitching together thousands of individual bits of documentary film, feature films, audio recordings, photographs, and home movies, all taken in Lebanon from the 1950s to the present, Lebanese filmmaker Lana Daher succeeds in depicting the country she both does and doesn’t know, a country caught in recurring cycles of violence and longing, and confused about whether it would be better to remember the recent past, or erase it entirely. In its themes and editing, Daher’s film strongly reminds one of Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983). Cuts between thematic sections are swift, but well telegraphed. For instance, in an early sequence, viewers see men outfitting themselves with guns, driving around, and enjoying their machismo, all to a 1970s cop show soundtrack. Just as one is settling into the groove, pleasant shots of daily life, markets, bakeries, fruit baskets, and children in school buses take over. Then comes a shot of what look like bricks in the back of a car, with people carefully threading wires throughout the stack and fitting it all under the seats, followed by shots of people crossing the street, and driving home from work. Viewers are thus prepared for the sudden cut to an exploding car bomb, and the following section depicting war and destruction. Still, the violence depicted throughout the film will be disturbing for most viewers. One of the most brutal scenes shows a militia soldier (filmed at a distance) taking a sniper bullet while climbing over a barrier, and falling to the ground. The essayistic tone of the film will make it most helpful for teachers to use Do You Love Me as a springboard into further discussion of the themes and subjects on which it touches, more so than as a focused educational chronicle of Lebanese history. However, the film’s website contains an index where all the media objects used in the film (video, audio, and still photographs) are identified, described, and organized by date. This will help students explore a given historical event, or work of art, more thoroughly. Do You Love Me will leave viewers with many questions, about the sources of human conflict, about the nature of the relationship between men and women, and, most of all, about the degree to which finding joy in life depends upon forgetting the past. It is applicable to courses in middle eastern studies, film studies, history, literature, philosophy, communication, and political science (among others). It is appropriate for a college through general adult audience, with an advisory for some violent and disturbing scenes.