The fact that Lebanon had a space programme is just one of the surprises in Khalil Joreige and Joana Hadjithomas’ fascinating dispatch from the “who knew?” fringes of docu-making.
The duo source archive materials and interviewees to explore how ’60s scientists in Beirut developed a rocket until civil war grounded the experiments.
But their ace trick is to make a story about rocket science moving. A sequence involving a statue drags, but the lament for lost dreams adds an achingly wistful note of the what-might-have-beens.
