Taste of Cement

As part of Panorama Europe 2018, the Goethe-Institut is pleased to present Berlin-based Syrian filmmaker Ziad Kalthoum’s latest film, Taste of Cement.

Kalthoum’s award-winning, cinematically audacious documentary explores the days and nights of Syrian refugees employed as construction workers in post-Civil War Beirut. Laboring to erect a towering skyscraper by day, they spend their nights in curfew, relegated to the cavernous basement of the site, haunted by memories of a homeland left in ruins, hoping for a chance to rebuild.

“Kalthoum has created here a study of men anguished by conflict without ever exploiting their predicament; Cement is a cinematic odyssey that invokes the senses and proves that the moving image is a singularly apt medium for representing the cost of human displacement.”—Rooney Elmi, Reverse Shot

Taste of Cement
Germany/Syria/Lebanon/United Arab Emirates/Qatar, 2017, 85 min
Directed by Ziad Kalthoum