Nadine Labaki and her latest movie, Where Do We Go Now?

Where Do We Go Now? by Nadine Labaki

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Nadine Labaki, a  Lebanese actress and director, co-wrote, directed, and starred in her feature-film debut, Caramel, which became an international sensation at film festivals and went on to achieve box office success.

Her latest movie, Where Do We Go Now?, a musical comedy-drama set in an isolated village has won the 2011 People’s Choice award at the Toronto International Festival. The movie also had very good reviews, premiering in Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section. It went on to play in more than 40 countries.

Set in a religiously mixed village, the movie is about a group of women trying to preserve their town in the midst of inter-religious tension. The town’s location is never mentioned, probably wanting to make the movie apply to anywhere in the Middle East where you have diversity.

Labaki has said about the movie, “It’s not a story about war; on the contrary, it’s about how to avoid war. You can’t live in Lebanon without feeling this threat, which ends up coloring what we do and our ways of expression.”

Labaki had just learned she was pregnant when she started to think of her next movie. Then she thought ; « If my son was now a teenager, how far would I go to stop him from going into the street, to stop him from killing?’”.

And it was the beginning of Where Do We Go Now?