Randa Chahal Sabbag has spent the better part of her career examining her war-ravaged homeland, Lebanon. Her latest film, set in 1981 Beirut, focuses on the lives of the people, mainly immigrants and servants, who remained there after the wealthy Lebanese abandoned their mansions and luxury apartments for Europe. Chahal Sabbag adopts a comical, absurdist tone in depicting the surreal quality of life within a war zone, typified by Sri Lankan and Filipina maids who obliviously continue their domestic routine in an abandoned building. But interspersing comic scenes alongside chilling acts of violence, she never lets us forget the horrors of war. The film has been the subject of great controversy in Lebanon.