A Frown Gone Mad - Omar Mismar

In a Beirut beauty salon, Bouba injects Botox and fillers while conversations drift from TikTok trends to the shadow of war. Filmed from a single fixed camera, Omar Mismar captures raw, sometimes bloody procedures alongside intimate exchanges that expose decades of violence woven into daily life. Amid airstrikes, Bouba’s mantra—“They destroy and we repair”—becomes a quiet act of resilience. Winner of the Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at IDFA 2024, A Frown Gone Mad is a poetic time capsule of a city determined to endure, where smoothing a wrinkle turns into a gesture of resistance.