"One of These Days" by Nadim Tabet premieres digitally on Onassis Foundation YouTube

A 24-hour youth chronicle in Beirut. They’re in their early twenties, they are smart, beautiful and hungry for life. Beirut is experiencing yet another terrorist attack with street demonstrations and police checkpoints. For this generation who has known war since birth, it’s sadly just one of these days. They still have the music, their youth and their dreams. They play the game of seduction, fall in and out of love and kill the boredom.

"One of These Days" is first of all the story of Maya, Yasmina, Rami and Tarek. Young people aged between 17 and 22, busy asking questions and undergoing experiences proper to their age: love, sex, drugs, music, boredom, carelessness... In order to fulfill their quest for intense life experiences, they seek their own benchmarks in a Lebanese society on the verge of decay, contaminated as it is by the crisis of its institutions and the problems in the region.

This constant evolution between the axes of life and death constitutes the daily reality of the Lebanese. In this context, speaking of the youth is for me the ideal starting point to portray some of that reality. In the story of Rami, Yasmina, Maya and Tarek, these two axes are embodied in their thirst for experiences and the streets of Beirut, where we come across protesters, Syrian refugees and army checkpoints, where we hear radio broadcasts about past and future disasters on a daily basis. Even if they manage to ignore it for a while, the atmosphere of this besieged city eventually intrudes into their field of vision and their context. It is this disconnection between the world of the youth and the reality of the country that interests me, and represents the thread of the film’s narrative.

This “ordinary” day, where our four young protagonists engage in games of love and seduction, will also witness the gradual reduction of their living environment, leaving them with barely any room for carelessness. It is as if in Lebanon, in order to become an adult one has to be contaminated by the reality of the country and the region. Having already directed several short films revolving around the world of youth, my intention with One of These Days was to expand my thoughts on this universe.

There is certainly a nostalgic element that has often driven me to inscribe my films in the world of the youth. And it is also certain that there are autobiographical aspects in this film. But what holds particular interest for me in the youth of today, is the fact that the Lebanon of my adolescence did not resemble their at all. I was born during the Civil War and spent my adolescence in a country under reconstruction, where consumer society was not very present yet.

Unlike previous generations, the young people of today have not experienced war and are not crushed under the weight of the past. Despite this candor, however, I have noticed that these youngsters are still driven to repetition, to reenacting the quarrels of preceding generations. By enabling my camera to examine the youth of today, it is almost as if I am trying to identify the ways in which they allow themselves to be infected by the reality of the country and its muddy past.

Written and directed by Nadim Tabet

Produced by Georges Schoucair

Co-produced by Wadih Safieddine

Associate producer Myriam Sassine

Director of photography Pascal Auffray, AFC

Editor Pascale Hannoyer

Julia Gregory

Original music Charbel Haber / The Bunny Tylers

Cast Manal Issa

Yumna Marwan

Reine Salameh

Panos Aprahamian

Nicolas Cardahi

Julien Farhat

Walid Feghaly

Art director Nadine Ghanem

Sound editor and designer Rana Eid

Line producer Eli Souaiby

Nermine Haddad

Production supervisor Christian Eid

Produced by Abbout Productions

In co-production with Déjà Vu

In association with Né à Beyrouth

In co-production and with the support of Enjaaz, a Dubai Film Market Initiative

World sales by Celluloid Dreams the directors label