BFI London Film Festival Film Festivals Review

October 18, 2023

byGeorgia May

Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano (2023) ‘BFI-LFF’ Movie Review: "Detach yourself from Lebanon […] You must escape Lebanon" are among the opening lines in Cyril Aris’s dogged documentary about a film crew’s persistence to get their movie made. "O leaders, Lebanon is empty now. Lebanon is over." It’s on this note of despair that we’re introduced to the filmmaker’s homeland, plunged into even more chaos than usual following the tragic explosion in Beirut on August 4, 2020.

Shaky handheld footage depicts the blood and rubble of the capital city, where Aris and his team were set to produce their feature drama, Costa Brava, Lebanon. Limp bodies are carried past the camera, and photos of the film crew splash the screen, blood-stained, shell-shocked, and the cinematographer ironically—in the cruelest of ways—blinded in one eye. In the aftermath, Beirut lives to a soundtrack of broken glass and falling buildings, and the crew must decide whether to push on or abandon production.

Director Mounia Akl boasts a Lebanese-loving filmography despite having a conflicted relationship with it. "Torn between loving and hating this country" are the words her character uses, and it’s this split between loyalties that backdrops the entire documentary. Aris weaves in still shots of anti-government graffiti, protestors carrying nooses—a symbol synonymous with revolution—and quotes like "Beirut will never change. Even if an army breached its streets for 100 years." Yet, there is still a devotion to this country, eternally present throughout the film.

Collectively, and after a few tears, the crew decided to make their film among the nighttime tear gas and morning traffic jams. But the trauma of the explosion (which killed over 200 people and wounded at least 6,500) that electro-shocked the nation was just the beginning, and more obstacles were to come.

It’s tiring simply watching Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano as Akl and Aris face wildfires, storms, flooded sets, COVID-19 restrictions, isolation, detained actors, and a financial crisis that wipes 2/3 of their funding. Fear pops into children’s eyes at the sound of the slightest rumble, backing into Akl’s body, who reassures the 9-year-old actress that it’s just the noise of builders. It’s an environment most of us couldn’t imagine, and yet the crew is still seen laughing through most of the documentary, taking selfies, and cuddling each other like one big family. You can feel the TLC they have not just for their beloved movie (which they despise at times, understandably) but for each other.

A still from Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano (2023)

Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano is self-aware enough to draw comparisons between itself and Lost in La Mancha (2002) and Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991). Both documentaries go behind the scenes of the most famously hellish productions in cinematic history— Terry Gilliam’s Don Quixote and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. But Aris’s documentary goes beyond either of these. It doesn’t just depict the trials and tribulations of making a movie but uses it as a lens to explore an ill-equipped political system, or the Lebanese "mafia," as Aris dubs it, where candlelight loses its romantic quality and becomes a necessity through city-wide power cuts.

Despite the violent protests that drape the documentary in mourning, Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano makes us feel part of the film crew family, who use talking to us as their way of self-expression. Akl describes the production as a "bubble of joy," keeping the death tolls and pandemic anxieties outside until the weekend. It’s a bubble we’re privileged to step inside, where the team—alongside most of their generation—continue to live, dance, work, and create during a time of such political upheaval, like that of youngsters in the Weimar Republic, where the phrase "dancing on the edge of a volcano" was first coined.

The dystopia Akl envisioned for her fictional movie, set in a polluted 2030, turns out to be eerily less dangerous than their real surroundings in a post-explosion Beirut. But there is still hope. The youth still flood the streets, and they demand justice. They laugh, they dream, they protest, they fight, they protect. "It’s a time for a rebirth," Akl’s father says, "and they’ll shine. I’m sure of that." Despite the fact that "everything should lead them to desperation," both for Costa Brava, Lebanon’s production, and Lebanon as a whole.

As Akl’s eyes water on the car journey home—a shot that bookends Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano—there’s the distinct idea of leaving one’s home and then coming back. Of the people left behind. The final narration, taken from Costa Brava, Lebanon, and already played once in the documentary, calls to mind Chantal Akerman’s News from Home (1977), where a mother narrates to her daughter, "Write soon sweetheart, you’re loving mother […] I know you’re busy, but try to write. It’s all I have left. Write soon…" It goes:

"My eyes will adjust to the darkness. I’ll leave for a while. But when I come back, it will be summer, with blazing sun, and music everywhere. You’ll ask me: what took you so long? And I’ll tell you where I’ve been…"