Lebanon has banned the screening of a film about homosexuality and another on so-called “pleasure marriages” practised in some Muslim communities, in a blow to its reputation as a bastion of tolerance in a deeply conservative region.
The films, which had been due to be shown at the Beirut International Film Festival that opened recently, were blocked by a government censorship committee, festival organisers said.
Confirming the bans, an Interior Ministry spokesman cited a Lebanese news report which attributed the decision to “obscene scenes of kissing between gay men, philandering, naked men and sexual intercourse between men” in one film and “sex scenes that offend public opinion and obscene language” in the other.
Critics took to local media and the internet to denounce the bans but festival director Colette Naufal said they could only be overturned by the Interior Minister, a move she considered highly unlikely.
Naufal said the decision represented a step backwards for Lebanon after several years the festival had been permitted to show controversial films, including one about paedophilia.
“Lebanon has one thing that stands out: its freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of everything,” she told Reuters.
That's the difference between Lebanon and the whole of the Middle East
“That’s the difference between Lebanon and the whole of the Middle East.”
One of the banned films is L’Inconnu du Lac (Stranger by the Lake) from French director Alain Guiraudie – about a relationship between two men – screened this year at Cannes Film Festival.
Homosexuals face discrimination and alienation in Lebanon and have been prosecuted for years under a law forbidding “acts against nature”, which judges often interpret as criminalising sex between men.
However, Beirut is also home to a large gay community and a gay tourism industry that includes bars and nightclubs. Despite its relative liberalism by regional standards, Lebanon has a history of banning films, plays and books that touch on the taboo subjects of sex, religion and politics.
The second film is I Offered You Pleasure, a 15-minute short about temporary “pleasure marriages”, so named because they are often used to circumvent Islamic proscriptions on sex outside of marriage, including prostitution.
Based on interviews with women from Lebanon, Iraq and Bahrain, the film tells the story of a Shi’ite Muslim woman named Iman, who is coerced into agreeing to a “pleasure marriage” with her teenage neighbour Wael.