Tea with Adonis

Tea with Adonis.

Adonis is a queer seventy-three-year-old man. He currently lives in the Ashrafieh district of Beirut. He continues to water his numerous plants daily and host his numerous friends for cheerful dinners every other week. Adonis is full of stories from the sixties, seventies, eighties and the nineties. Though he did not live continuously in the country, he has been travelling the world, with constant visits to his homeland. Conversations with him can easily switch from academic intricacies to plain old gossip about sexual matters or unresolved crimes. Ameer is a thirty-something younger man who wants to gather stories and anecdotes from Adonis. He feels the Lebanese queer past hasn’t been archived well enough so he views Adonis as the golden hen. However, when he notices Adonis has it easier to be physically nude than to reveal the full nudity of his feelings, he starts feeling frustrated. What else to expect, would Adonis say, from someone who always lived a double life?

Director.

Selim Mourad was born in Beirut in 1987. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in audiovisual studies (2009) and his master’s degree in Filmmaking (2012) from IESAV (Beirut). In 2017, he completed a second master’s degree in Film Research around the theme of “The Screen of Sacrifice”. He also participated in the Documentary Exchange Workshop with the Danish Film School. His filmography includes some short documentaries like the award-winning Letter to My Sister (2008) and A Trip to the Barbershop (2010). While in university, he also directed several medium length films like: + (2010), La Demolition (2011) and *:La conception (2012). This Little Father Obsession is his first feature documentary. It premiered in competition in Visions Du Réel international film festival (2016) and went on to have a beautiful festival life. In 2021, Selim finished a political film trilogy about the nude body by screening the third film Moss Agate in the International Film Festival of Rotterdam (Tiger Competition). After having deirected the medium lenght Tea with Adonis, Selim is currently developing his next feature film.