“As soon as I decided to stay in Beirut, to testify to everything that was happening there, my way of filming changed. I would take my camera and I would record images whenever I felt the echo of this big garden that was disappearing. Even today, all my work is dominated by the search for this garden of childhood, for its idealised memory, that dwelled and still dwells in me entirely.

That’s why I particularly like Beirut, Never Again: I film the walls, the streets, the places that are familiar to me, with love and pain, pain at seeing that everything I loved is disappearing, but motivated by the force of will and the necessity of preserving memories of it all.

With Beirut, Never Again I broke all the rules of editing, alongside my editor Philippe Gosselet, our four hands working nimbly as if we were playing a piano duet. I entrusted the writing of the text to Etel Adnan, the great Lebanese poet who wrote a text that is, in my opinion, the most on point text that has been written about commitment for its own sake, not for the sake of others, and it’s very important to take it on so as never to betray oneself. I can claim everything I have done in my life because I did it freely.”