A Swiss woman trades her home mountains for the Beirut of the 1950s, and finds a love story that has to survive far more than distance in this 2021 French drama.
What is Skies of Lebanon about?
Skies of Lebanon opens with Alice arriving in Beirut from Switzerland, drawn into a city that feels sun-soaked and alive after the landscape she left behind. She falls for Joseph, an astrophysicist chasing an improbable ambition: putting the first Lebanese national into space. Alice settles into his family with an ease the film treats almost like grace, and for years the marriage plays out as something close to paradise. That calm does not hold. As the civil war closes in around Beirut, the same city and household that once felt like Eden become the site of everything the couple has to protect or lose. Director Chloé Mazlo lets the earlier, brighter stretch of the story sit in full before the war reshapes it, so the contrast lands with real weight rather than being announced.
About the cast
Alba Rohrwacher leads as Alice, opposite a cast that includes Wajdi Mouawad, Isabelle Zighondi, Mariah Tannoury, Jade Breidi, Odette Makhlouf, Hany Tamba and Ziad Jallad. The ensemble spans both French and Lebanese screen traditions, which suits a story built around a marriage that itself crosses two worlds.
Context & significance
Skies of Lebanon is a French production set almost entirely in Lebanon, tracing decades of the country's history through one household rather than through wide historical sweep. Mazlo's approach favors intimate, often stylized detail over documentary realism, using the astrophysicist's space ambitions as a symbol of hope that the story can return to even as circumstances darken. At 92 minutes, the film moves through a long span of time with a compact, focused hand rather than a sprawling one.
Watching Skies of Lebanon on Ktime
Skies of Lebanon is available to watch on K-Time with a free account login, part of a catalogue curated for Persian-speaking audiences around the world. There is no cost to read this page or browse the catalogue; only watching the film calls for signing in. The site's Farsi interface makes it straightforward to place a French drama like this one alongside other international titles in the collection.