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Best movie of this year hands down!

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Despite being inspired by the 1975 Lebanese Civil War, "The Insult" has more universality than you might first expect. Despite the location of the story (and actual filming) being in Beirut, it could have happened in any city populated by two people (or more) of different origins and background. When two of these individuals anywhere else in the world happen to have a run-in as with our two protagonists, a Lebanese Christian and a Palestinian refugee, a similar story may well develop.The story is present-time but the protagonists carry with them the heavy burden of history. Tony Hanna (Adel Karam) is a well educated Lebanese Christian doing well as an automobile repair garage owner in Beirut. A bundle of joy will soon be bestowed to the family as a baby girl with approaching due day. Yasser Salameh (Kamel El Basha), although by status a Palestinian refugee, is not doing badly at all, employed as a well-respected foreman of a construction company. The technical legality of the employment may be a tad shady but does not seem to bother anybody. He is also happily married.The run-in between these two very proud men is trivial. The plotline can simply be sum up as escalation of insult heaped on insult culminating in a court case. Tony the plaintiff is represented by seasoned lawyer Wajdi Wehbe (Camille Salameh), and Yasser the defendant by brilliant young attorney Nadine Wehbe (Diamond Bou Abboud) who happens to be Wajdi's daughter.I am not going into the details of the plot as the film is best enjoyed when left alone to unfold by itself. The things to watch for are expected. On the macro scale, it is the abovementioned segment of recent history and how the effect lingers to the present day on the populace. On the micro side you see how human nature is affected by childhood trauma, feelings of being a victim, pride (not necessarily a good word), incontrollable anger. But then there is also level-headed common sense as well as human decency and goodwill.Acting is uniformly solid, from not just the four key characters mention, but also a rather big supporting cast. An Oscar nomination that is good enough to win.In closing, I must mention how I enjoy the closure, not in the courtroom but outside, known only to the two men themselves. This is a brilliant touch of self-administered poetic justice. SPOILER: one deliberately provokes the other to get even with the earlier violence BEFORE delivering an apology which would have avoided the court case in the first place.

Why do Lebanese movies leave us breathless? Or better question can be "why do movies from the Middle East / made by artists from the Middle East catch us so helplessly?" For years and years, for centuries and centuries, the soil of the Middle East has been harvested with beautiful sunshine and woes for every nation, every group, every society and every human on this soil. No need longer words, the movie 'The Insult' gives not the answer of why questions expecting for these woes but perfectly explains that the woes have been experienced equally, in the same manner, with the same style of tragedy for every human being in the Middle East. Is this movie for peace? More than this, it is for mutual understanding. Where is no empathy, there is no peace. The story evolves around a conflict between two men, one from Christian society of Lebanon and the other from Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon. The court case expands the story and brings the audience into a spiral labeled with "hate and revenge". The insult is an excellent movie, an excellent shot directed by Ziyad Duveyri. All players in the movie amaze us with their performances. But the biggest part of our thanks must be delivered to Ziad Doueiri and Joelle Touma, who wrote the script. We, the audience, have watched many movies, TV series where the plot happens in a court. It is surely not easy to write a scenario, a realistic scenario on a court case. The weight of dialogues, the order of words, and the stream of the case, all need a delicate equilibrium. Very few of scenarios can reach the excellent level in realizing this tough mission. As for the Insult, the pen in the hand of Ziad Doueiri and Joelle Touma suceeds this magic without having any difficulty. There is also another success in the movie, it is to be unpredictable. For the experienced audience, the satisfaction of watching movie has been lesser nowadays because we predict / guess what comes the next. The Insult does not give this comfort to its audiences and keeps the audiences every moment inside the chamber of sweet excitement to watch a movie. The Insult is a movie rightly deserves the statement "must be watched"!

Prior to seeing this film, I was honestly not familiar with the particular challenges occurring in Lebanon. While this movie attempts to present both sides of the conflicts, it is not intended as a documentary and I am left with a sense that I am still unaware of the cultural, religious, and political strife's encroaching on this region. Nonetheless, the overarching themes of intolerance, entitlement, bigotry and xenophobia seem all too familiar to my US-centric perspective. Not fully understanding the nuances of the polarized factions in this particular drama actually makes it easier to identify the human elements that drive conflicts around the world. You can replace "Lebanese Christian vs. refugee" with "Israeli vs Palestinian," "native Zimbabwe workers vs. white farm owners," "Indonesian residents vs. affluent Chinese immigrants," or even simply "Republicans vs. Democrats" and still tell the same exact story. While the details behind the conflicts can be dramatically different, the human emotions and drives that escalate responses and shut down communication and understanding seem universal. This film is definitely worth a look, but save it for a time when you're prepared for an introspective look at world events and the human conditions that instigate them.

Brilliant script, visual story-telling, and cast. Adel Karam, Kamel el Basha and Rita Hayek, among others, give outstanding performances. From his debut with West Beirut, Doueiri has proven a great cinema maker. Lila ça dit was another marvelous work. I only lament that his films are so few and far between, no doubt due to funding challenges.