Perhaps What I Fear Does Not Exist

Suddenly paralysed, the father of filmmaker Corine Shawi has been sitting in a hospital bed for a year undergoing examinations and therapies. His wife Soad is always with him. Nothing is as it was and the hospital room has become the centre of family life. In Perhaps What I Fear Does not Exist, Shawi weaves personal reflections and intimate moments with interview sequences of her family and footage of everyday hospital life into a multi-layered tapestry. In doing so, she questions her own family structure and depicts, at the same time, the current state of Lebanese society. "What does happiness mean?" asks Shawi's sister, sitting frustrated in the back seat of a car. Who is happy? What does that even mean? In the end, everyone has to find the answers for themselves.

Corine Shawi is a Lebanese filmmaker. She directed her first feature documentary Les Femmes bonnes from 2000 to 2006 by observing the life of Doulika and other Sri Lankan women. She is also the director of several short documentaries.