What It Takes to Be Mister Lebanon

As opportunities shrink in Lebanon, contestants are pouring increasing amounts of time, money and effort into the country’s most famous male beauty pageant, and the possibilities it might unlock

HinDidi: When Bollywood Invited Algeria to Dance 

In the aftermath of independence, Bollywood offered Algeria something revolution could not: the freedom to dream, to love, and to imagine a life beyond struggle. Decades later, one Indian film, Janitou, remains a tender relic of a future that never quite arrived

Eurovision, Samira Said, and Morocco’s Unreceived Love Letter

Revisiting Morocco’s choice to perform at Eurovision in 1980, the first and last Arab country to do so, reveals a complex web of forces at play in our history, and a legacy that stands in evidence of a confused national identity, much less healed from colonial violation than it purports to be

Aestheticised Violence and The Spectacle of Political Slop

How a war became content, and why the exhaustion is the point

This Film Festival is Taking SWANA Cinema from Beirut to Rome for Its Second Edition

Half film festival, half fundraiser, Here & Elsewhere returns for its second year in Beirut and Rome with a programme built around memory

At SeeDjerba, the Tunisian Island Becomes the Gallery

At its 2026 edition, See Djerba turned a Tunisian island's fortresses, shrines and craft villages into a gallery that asks you to look at the place as closely as the art

Following Traces: Anthony Bourdain, Food, and the Politics of Travelling with Care 

Anthony Bourdain arrived in Beirut in 2006 to film a food show. Two days later, Israel bombed the city. The footage, and the Emmy nomination that followed, say something uncomfortable about the Western appetite for Arab tragedy on television. On food, travel, and the difference between loving a place and consuming it

Anatomy of a Manouche: When Akkawi Cheese is Hard to Come By

As people move, recipes travel with them – stretching, adapting and carrying the weight of memory, longing and belonging