Lebanese filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige explore the importance of personal and historical memory in a drama bouncing between Montreal and Beirut. The tragedy of the Lebanese civil war extends far beyond the 1980s and into the third generation of a family resettled in Canada in the affecting drama Memory Box . It marks the first film in nine years from the award-winning team Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, whose work has ranged freely over feature films, docs, installations and performance art. Though Memory Box shows the sophisticated modernity of their artistic approach, it is also one of the most accessible of their films, thanks to a winning cast of fine actresses and an engrossing back-and-forth timeline that jumps from wartime Beirut under the bombs to the staid tranquility of modern-day Montreal. It bows in competition in Berlin, where the directors’ intelligent probing into our perception of the past should find appreciation. Among other things, … [Read more...] about ‘Memory Box’: Film Review | Berlin 2021