Screening as part off MIFF’s Homelands Now program A Perfect Day takes the viewer on a 24-hour journey through modern-day Beirut?seen through the eyes of Malek, a young man suffering from narcolepsy.

The film opens with Malek and his mother, Claudia, at a lawyer’s office where the two are submitting an application to have Malek’s father officially listed as a missing person?15-years after his disappearance. The scene captures A Perfect Day’s central theme; a people whose past keeps invading the present. It is a topic the film keeps revisiting. For instance, Malek later visits a building site where construction has stopped due to the discovery of a corpse. Here the ghosts of the past are not only haunting Beirut’s people, but the city’s landscape as well.

There are numerous scenes of Claudia in her house, trapped and alone, unable to do anything but think of the past. Malek at least, is constantly outside, immersing himself in Beirut’s traffic, its discos and its buzz. However, his narcolepsy is a reminder that he too is not free.

Beirut is depicted as a thriving, bustling town, very much the ‘city that never sleeps’. Directors Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Boreige employ numerous panning shots across Beirut’s bars, clubs, streets, traffic and billboards. The city is dynamic and appears unstoppable. These shots, along with the minimal editing, give A Perfect Day a hypnotic, rhythmic quality.

The film’s one major flaw is that it plays as though it has been made strictly with an international audience in mind, and this detracted from its overall potency. A global audience might get more insight into a city and its people by viewing a film that a local audience would watch.

Nevertheless, Beirut is eminently fascinating and that alone makes A Perfect Day a worthwhile experience.