Michelle & Noel Keserwany

Blaise Adilon

Venue

Usines Fagor

Lyon

Born 1988 in Chiyah, Lebanon.
Lives and works between Paris, France and Beirut, Lebanon.
Born 1990 in Sebnay, Lebanon.
Lives and works between Paris, France and Beirut, Lebanon

Acerbic yet exceedingly droll condemnations of the dysfunctional social and political situation in Lebanon have become the hallmark of Michelle and Noel Keserwany’s video clips, which regularly break viewing records on YouTube. For their first film to be shot in France, they chose Lyon as the setting for a study of the interdependent fragility and strength in each of us. Through the story of two Arab (from present-day Lebanon and Syria) immigrant women in Lyon, they show the effect of historical events on our lives today: our individuality is shaped by travel, working conditions, and cultural and personal traumas. And so it is that the exploitation of women on silkworm farms in Mount Lebanon, centuries earlier, seems to fuel Asma and Sarah’s struggle, without their being aware of it. The music, by Zeid Hamdan and Lynn Adip, was made specially for the clip and is a reflection of it: an encounter between two women, two cultures, and two regions of the world.