On the fifth day of the 14th edition of the Beirut International Film Festival this Sunday October 5, the Abraj Theaters in Furn ash-Shebbak are still hosting film screenings under the International Panorama and other unclassified categories.

A debate on how to find a producer, agent and financing for a movie will be held at 11 a.m. with the participation of lawyer Craig Emmanuel and several filmmakers.

5 p.m. shows include Mathieu Amalric’s La Chambre Bleue, which was slated for the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard award. Based on a novel by Georges Simenon, it portrays a love story between a man and a woman against a Hitchcock backdrop. Amalric himself plays the leading role alongside his wife and theater actress Stéphanie Cléau.

La Chambre Bleue

At another theater, the BIFF audience will be watching Love Is Strange, by U.S. director Ira Sachs and starring John Lithgow and Alfred Molina as two homosexuals who had benefited from the new law on same-sex marriage. Yet the same problems as any regular couple force them to face potential separation.

Love is strange

Under the Culinary and Environment category, Hubert Canaval’s Energized speaks of the production and consumption of energy, the depletion of fossil fuel, nuclear threats, and the effects of mega solar, hydroelectric and wind power stations.

7.30 p.m. movies start with the second screening of Tom à la Ferme, by French-Canadian director Xavier Dolan who plays the leading role alongside Pierre-Yves Cardinal. It is inspired by an eponymous play about a homosexual man who lives in the city and travels to the country for his departed lover’s funeral. There, he meets with his lover’s mother, who knows nothing about their relationship, and his brother who blackmails him in order to keep the truth hidden from his mother. Having won the FIPRESCI Prizeat the 2013 Venice Film Festival, it was slated for the Golden Lion and competed for many prizes in several festivals, including the Canadian Screen Awards and the Toronto Film Festival.

The Unknown Known, a documentary by U.S. director Errol Morris, is based on 11 days of interviews chronicling the career of former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the architect of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. It was screened at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado in August 2014 and was slated to win awards at the Chicago and Detroit film festivals. The Fog of War, an earlier documentary by Morris which had won an Oscar in 2003, featured Robert McNamara, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, explaining his war philosophy. This film was indeed a poignant testimony as McNamara explicitly regretted the failures and loss of lives inherent to the Vietnam War.

Also under the International Panorama category is Calvary, which is written and directed by Irish filmmaker John Michael McDonagh. Starring Brendan Gleeson and Kelly Reilly, it features a good priest who finds himself under threat and locked in a confrontation with sinister forces.

Calvary

Other 7.30 p.m. screenings include Here Be Dragons, one of three works by Irish director and film critic Mark Cousins under the Spotlight on a Director, which focuses on his works. A Story of Children and Film is another Cousins film showing at 10 p.m.

10 p.m. shows include second screenings under the International Panorama category:

· Siddarth, an Indian movie directed by Richie Mehta, chronicles a father’s journey across India to look for his 12-year-old son, whom he fears has been kidnapped by child traffickers.

· May in The Summer is a film by U.S. director Cherien Dabis, who is born to a Palestinian father and a Jordanian mother and who plays the leading role in the film. Starring Hiam Abbass, Alia Shawkat and Nadine Malouf, it tells the story of a Christian Palestinian girl living in the United States who returns to Amman to marry her Muslim fiancé despite her mother’s objections. May in The Summer competed for prizes at the Sundance and Dubai film festivals. Dabis herself has won several prizes, including the Arab Muhr Award for the Best Short Film for her 2006 short film Make A Wish. Amreeka, her first feature film, received an award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and won the Arab Muhr Award for Best Actress at the Dubai International Film Festival.

May In The Summer

· Night Moves, by U.S. director Kelly Reichardt, features Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard, and tells the story of three environmentalists coming together to blow up a hydroelectric dam. This film won the Grand Special Prize at the 2013 Deauville Film Festival and Best DOP at the Valladolid International Film Festival, and was slated for winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.