To escape the civil war between Christians and Muslims, a family moves from the countryside to Beirut—only to be caught in an equally dangerous situation. The film revisits the decade and a half of civil war in Lebanon that ended in 1990 through the eyes of Rami, following the boy from age twelve to adulthood as his family struggles with unemployment, death, and the disappearance of loved ones. Documentary filmmaker Jean Khalil Chamoun, in his first fiction film, combines archival footage and a verite style to create a harrowing overview of the senseless conflict that left his country in physical and moral tatters. Yet even as he funnels this history through his young protagonist, he invests the shadows of the past with “noble dreams and precious memories.”