Cinema City will bring Charbel, a Lebanese biopic about Saint Charbel, to UAE cinemas on Thursday, 26 November, in Arabic.
Cinema City is the film’s official UAE distributor. According to Cinema City, the release gives the Lebanese community in the UAE a link to the memory and identity of the homeland. It also lets audiences from other cultures learn about Lebanon’s spiritual and humanitarian heritage through cinema. VOX Cinemas also lists the film, with the same date, Arabic language, and a cast led by Jerry Ghazal, Father Roukoz El Hajj, and Carole El Hajj.
According to MarSharbel’s film page, the film follows Saint Charbel from the boy Youssef Makhlouf, born in 1828 in the mountain village of Bekaa Kafra, to the hermit. Nadim Mehanna directed it, and it runs about 130 minutes. Ghazal plays the young Charbel, and Father Roukoz El Hajj plays him later in life. Claudia Marshalian wrote the screenplay, and NMPRO and MTV produced it.
I wanted to tell his story without confining it to a specific religious context.
Nadim Mehanna, director
He also told The Beiruter he approached Charbel as a hero and a character, as he would any protagonist. The record has a gap, because Charbel lived in the hermitage for 23 years. Mehanna said, “Who knows what he did there?” Then: “So we imagined what he might have done.” The film also includes documented historical facts, plus dramatic, emotional, and spiritual elements.
The film premiered on 9 October at the BlackBox in the Beirut Media Zone, under President Joseph Aoun’s patronage. According to The Beiruter, its Lebanese release was set for 22 October, after a March date was postponed following the outbreak of war. The 22nd of each month is also associated with the monthly pilgrimage to Saint Charbel’s shrine in Annaya.
A trailer and a national fundraising campaign launched with the film, and the campaign raised more than $1.3 million to support an international release. MarSharbel’s page says public reporting hadn’t confirmed a wide international theatrical release, streaming, or an English-dubbed version when it was written.
Nabil Lebbos directed an earlier Lebanese biopic, also called Charbel, in 2009; it runs about 1 hour 43 minutes.
For how to book a film at UAE cinemas, see our Klara and the Sun listings guide. Mehanna’s next film, about Saint Rafqa, is scheduled for 2027.
