Conversation with Mounia Akl

Creating in the Midst of Chaos

Text: Gilles Khoury. Photos: courtesy of Mounia Akl.

On the set of Costa Brava, Lebanon. Photo: Rudy Bou Chebel.

GILLES When did you first connect with cinema?

MOUNIA It wasn’t a connection, a precise moment, so much as a world in which I bathed. I grew up in a family of huge film lovers, with an uncle who was a pianist, and parents for whom movies occupied, and still occupy, a central place in their lives. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, all of our family activities, conversations and references were linked, in one way or another, to cinema. In fact, growing up, every time people wanted to compare me to someone, because of my behavior or my state of mind, they picked a character from the movies. Cinema is what brought us together, and today, looking back on it, it was obvious that I would make it my path. 

G And yet, you began by studying architecture...

M It was a rational choice, considering the difficulties involved in a career in cinema in a country like Lebanon, where the ecosystem and funding for making films were very limited, if not nonexistent at the time. That said, the architecture program at ALBA (the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts) only strengthened my determination to pursue a career
in filmmaking. The further I got from it, the more I knew that it was what I needed. I felt suffocated, and I was constantly frustrated, to such an extent that I soon started taking film classes, one of which involved a study of Abbas Kiarostami’s Close Up. When I left that class, it was like another trigger, the realization that I couldn’t do anything but cinema. 

Screenshots from the film Costa Brava, Lebanon. Cinematographer: Joe Saade.

G At what point did you get started in the field?

M I think that creativity and love are inseparable. While I was studying architecture, my boyfriend at the time was taking classes in engineering, and we were both feeling hemmed in, and dreaming of cinema. For both of us, Lebanon represented the frustration of not being able to fulfill our dreams. So one day, we decided to give ourselves a gift by creating, together, a short film that would be a kind of love letter to each other. It was very DIY, we called it Beirut, I Love You (I Love You Not), and we put it on YouTube, not thinking for a second that this short would spread so far and wide. So much so that we were approached by LBCI, the most important TV channel in Lebanon, which offered to turn the film into a series. Overnight…