Around the Pink House

Post-war Beirut: (re)construction everywhere. A rambling mansion is home to two refugee families. When an entrepreneur buys the place for a commercial centre, both the refugees (who have are given 10 days to get out) and the locals fall prey to confusion, fear and long-buried resentment. The script is a little too schematic and contrived, and the direction sometimes clumsy, but the shifts in loyalty are credibly handled, the pace sustained, and the whole leavened by a welcome sense of comic absurdity. How allegorical it's meant to be is unclear, but it's an intriguing account of the conflict between past and future, culture and capitalism, idealism and compromise.