The Secret Garden

After strange plants suddenly appear throughout an unnamed city, Camelia and Nahla discover a notebook that seems to hold the key to the vegetal invasion. Pairing documentary images of Beirut’s flora with a voiceover fable of mysterious rewilding, Ouayda plays with science-fiction tropes to obliquely evoke a political allegory of transformation, renewal and estrangement. The garden as refuge, the garden as elsewhere, the garden as everywhere: is the arrival of these new, nonhuman inhabitants an end or a beginning, a threat or a promise? (Erika Balsom)

This film will be shown as part of the screening SHORT FILM PROGRAM 3: PRESENCES.