The ugly one: in the presence of director Eric Baudelaire

Eric Baudelaire, Masao Adachi

Winter, Beirut. On a beach littered with cans washed up from the sea, Lili and Michel meet. Or perhaps they know each other from before… as they struggle to piece together the fragments of an uncertain past, memories emerge: an act of terrorism, an explosion, and the disappearance of a child, Elena. Woven throughout these fragments is the deep voice of a Japanese narrator who recounts his own experience of a weeping Beirut, and his 27 clandestine years fighting alongside the Palestinians as a member of the Japanese red army. His voiceover shapes Michel and Lili’s story, their fate dictated by the enigma created for them by this narrator who turns out to be legendary Japanese new wave filmmaker Masao Adachi.