Only Rebels Win is set in Beirut, where Hiam Abbass plays Suzanne, a Palestinian widow who falls in love with Osman, a man much younger than her. Osman is a refugee from Sudan without a residence permit in Tunisia. He is trying to find a way forward in life through work, and Suzanne becomes an important anchor for him. But Suzanne’s children oppose the relationship, while her colleagues are anything but supportive of her having fallen for a man from Africa.
The film was originally planned to be shot in Lebanon, but when Israel bombed the country, the production had to rethink its approach. Director Danielle Arbid refused to turn a French village into Beirut and instead decided to film the streets and interiors of the locations where she had planned to shoot in Beirut, before recreating the city in a studio. The backgrounds of the scenes are reminiscent of films in which sets were painted by hand. The construction of the city, and the shifts in scale that emerge within the frame, become an important visual piece of the story, in which questions of identity, racism and the search for security simmer beneath the surface.
– Mia Rogersdotter Gran
