Dubai: If you want to understand what it means to be Lebanese, there can be no better prism than the work of Georges Khabbaz. In the three decades Khabbaz has been active, he has been a pillar of the Lebanese art scene, the true king of the Lebanese stage. He has written, directed and starred in dozens of plays and television shows, portraying nearly every aspect of life in the Levantine nation with an honesty and fearlessness that has led some to call him the true face of the country.
Khabbaz has spent decades building a reputation in the region and around the world, winning Best Actor at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2007 for his acclaimed film “Under the Bombs” and a writer on Nadine Labaki’s Oscar-nominated 2018 film “Capernaum”. Worked as. Now 46 and with the immense global success of last year’s Netflix film “Perfect Strangers”, in which he played Walid, Khabbaz is now the writer and star of the hit MBC series “Brando El Shark”, a show that More than any other feather in his cap – it’s the culmination of his career so far.
Khabbaz on set with his “Brando El Shark” co-star Amal Arafa. (supply)
“Quite simply, this series is a recap of 30 years of my life,” Khabbaz told Arab News. “I’ve traveled decades, and put everything I’ve been through – the effort, the yearning, the success and the heartbreak – into 10 episodes, and kept the truth of it.”
The series follows a filmmaker – one of Khabbaz’s most underrepresented characters – who is desperate to obtain funding for his first film and fulfill his dreams of becoming a famous director. He is a man in love with film history, dreaming of Charlie Chaplin and “Casablanca”, and while art is his escape from reality, it is but a fleeting one. Her father’s health is deteriorating, and desperate for money, she begins pursuing country’s biggest star, the former Titanic Brando, to finally bring her plans to fruition.
What makes this story distinctly Lebanese in Khabbaz’s mind is manifold. The country, a veritable mosaic of cultures and influences, is full of art-obsessed creatives, but lacks avenues for those creatives to flourish.
Nadine Labaki and Georges Khabbaz on the set of “Perfect Strangers.” (supply)
“There are many educational and cultural difficulties, but we fight hard for our dreams and ambitions. We rely on our work, and we rely on each other, because we don’t have an environment that supports us Ho.” “Most of the systems we live in work against us. It exists to ruffle our feathers so that we can’t achieve our dreams. There are many threats that stop us from fighting for our passion, especially at the beginning of our careers. Frankly, you have to deal with a lot of crap.
Of course, Khabbaz feels he has earned the right to make such grandiose declarations about the state of his country.
“From the beginning, I had to work hard to find out what the Lebanese audience was really feeling,” says Khabbaz.
The magic of theater lies in its immediacy. People have to come every night to buy tickets, and once they’re seated there, the performers can feel their busyness anxiously from the stage. As Khabbaz wrote and performed the plays, he worked to fine-tune what it was that his audiences really cared about, and to find common ground in their concerns, rather than merely promoting them. .
“You have a huge audience in front of you that needs to be catered to, but it doesn’t work if you are not honest with yourself and true to your work. “They’ll never be satisfied, and neither will you, if it doesn’t come from a place deep inside you,” says Khabbaz. “I couldn’t contain myself and my emotions to satisfy them. And it hasn’t always been easy. In fact, over 30 years, it’s been a constant struggle that I’m always worried about.”
A scene from “Brando El Shark”. (supply)
After all, this is what “Brando El Shark” really is in Khabaz’s eyes. While its style draws from his artistic heroes – Woody Allen, Wes Anderson and the Coen brothers – its true exploration is that of a man in desperate pursuit of his dreams, who is in danger of losing his artistic heart in the process.
“The idea evolved from the thought that you shouldn’t lose yourself when you’re looking for yourself,” says Khabbaz.
In telling this story, Khabaz was careful not to confine the show to any one genre. Like life, it jumps in genres depending on the day, overflowing with joy, sorrow, and everything in between.
“This series is tragedy, comedy, parody, satire, musical, romance and mystery. It is theater and it is cinema in one. This series is my scientific laboratory,” he says.
There is more than one reason for that captivating style of storytelling. Khabbaz is an actor first and foremost and for actors, great parts are defined by their dimensions.
“Any actor would love to play this role because it is so varied and includes everything you learn about acting. A skilled actor likes to switch from one expression to another very quickly,” says Khabbaz .
As “Brando El Shark” wraps up its first season, Khabbaz is hard at work on his next film, “Greece”, the latest film from Syrian filmmaker Amir Fakhr Eldin, a sequel to the acclaimed 2021 film “The Stranger”. Starring Ashraf Barhom behind. In “Greece,” Khabbaz plays a depressed writer living in exile who learns to love life again after meeting an elderly woman on a remote island.
For Khabbaz, the film is a testament to how far he has come. Why? Because the role of the elderly woman is played by the iconic German actress Hanna Shaygulla, star of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “The Marriage of Maria Braun” (1979) and the defining star of the New German Cinema movement, now approaching her 80th birthday. Is.
“I still have a lot of dreams and goals in the world of cinema and theatre, but this is one of them. The opportunity to collaborate with such a genius is very humbling,’ says Khabbaz.
Khabbaz is aware of the respect he has built up in Lebanon and across the region, and as positive reviews for his latest series roll in, he is finally able to look back on his own journey with pride, and reflect that That’s what all the accolades represent.
“I’m like everyone in the audience. I’ve always chosen the subject matter of my work based on what I know people can connect with, what we have in common. I’m like everyone who sees me, and Maybe they look up to me because I’ve shown them through my work over the years that I’m like them.” I think they look up to me, who looks like them, as an example of what they can achieve Are.”