We bring the room together.
Beirut Film Society is a Canadian non-profit. What we actually do is unglamorous and specific: we find a hall, we license a film, we get the artists on a plane, and we tell a few thousand people in a city that tonight there is somewhere to be.
Vancouver· Windsor· Waterloo· Toronto· Ottawa· Saint-Eustache· Laval· Montréal· Halifax
A film is an excuse to be in a room.
About 270,000 Lebanese-Canadians live in this country. Most of them do not live in Montréal. They live in Windsor, in Halifax, in Waterloo, in a suburb where nothing in their own language has ever screened on a proper cinema screen.
So we go there. Not with a streaming link — with a booked hall, a projector, a film that was talked about back home, and often the person who made it. What happens next is the point: people arrive separately and leave having met each other. Parents bring children who have never heard a cinema full of people laugh in Arabic.
That is the whole organisation. Everything else — the tickets, the sponsors, the volunteers, the paperwork — exists to make that evening happen again in one more city.
One season, coast to coast.
- 33 Evenings
- 9 Cities
- 2,472 Paid tickets
- 500+ Guests welcomed free
- 500+ Volunteers and city teams
Attendance is quoted from the season ticket reports, not counted from this website — most seats last season were sold through Eveenty, so adding up only what passed through here would understate it badly.
Plotted at real coordinates. Vancouver to Halifax is about 4,700 km. Dot size is the number of evenings.
The films travelled too.
A film does not screen once and stop. Liste de Mariage played nine times in seven cities across four months. That is what a national tour buys you, and it is the reason a sponsor's name in front of one title is seen in a great many more rooms than one.
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Liste de Mariage
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Fakebook
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Short Film Programmes 1–3
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A Sad and Beautiful World
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The Voice of Hind Rajab
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West Beirut, with Carmen Lebbos
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The Third Rahbani
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Bel Nesbe La Bokra Chou — the Ziad Rahbani play, live
The season, gathering by gathering.
September 2025 to June 2026, the first year of the relaunched national tour. Every evening we have a record of — 33 of them, west to east.
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Vancouver
British Columbia 2 gatherings- Short films, a community screening for mutual aid
- A Sad and Beautiful World
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Windsor
Ontario 2 gatherings- The Voice of Hind Rajab
- The Voice of Hind Rajab
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Waterloo
Ontario 2 gatherings- Liste de Mariage
- Fakebook
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Toronto
Ontario 2 gatherings- Fakebook
- Liste de Mariage
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Ottawa
Ontario 3 gatherings- Meet the Stars
- Liste de Mariage
- Liste de Mariage
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Montréal, Laval and the Laurentides
Quebec 16 gatherings- Red carpet and opening night at the Rialto
- The Third Rahbani
- Short Film Programme 1
- Short Film Programme 2
- Short Film Programme 3
- Letters
- Yalla Baba
- Bornstars
- Bel Nesbe La Bokra Chou — the Ziad Rahbani play, live
- West Beirut, and a talk with Carmen Lebbos
- Fakebook
- Liste de Mariage — Laval
- Fakebook — Laval
- Liste de Mariage — Montréal
- Fakebook — Montréal
- Liste de Mariage — Saint-Eustache
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Halifax
Nova Scotia 6 gatherings- Liste de Mariage, first screening
- Liste de Mariage, second screening
- Fakebook, first screening
- Fakebook, second screening
- A Sad and Beautiful World, first screening
- A Sad and Beautiful World, second screening
Every city we reach, somebody local made happen.
This festival is not run from one office in Montréal. It is run by city teams — more than five hundred volunteers, ambassadors and organisers across Canada.
If Lebanese cinema has never come to your city, that is usually because nobody there has asked us yet. A city team can start with one person who knows a hall, a community, or simply enough people to fill fifty seats.
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On the night
Doors and welcome
Doors, tickets, the welcome table, helping an audience find its seats in three languages.
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Before it
Getting the word out
Finding a venue, reaching your community, translation, photography, getting the word out where we have no reach.
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All year
Bringing us to your city
Starting a city team where there is not one. This is how Windsor, Halifax and Vancouver happened.
Tell us four things
- Your name
- Your email
- Your phone, if you like
- Your city
- What you think you could offer
Write to us about volunteering
Somebody from the nearest city team will answer. There is no minimum, and no experience of cinema required.
The tenth edition is on sale.
Montréal, Ottawa and the Greater Toronto Area, 17–28 September 2026.
Be first to know
Programme announcements, presale access before the public, and festival news. A few emails a year, never more.