Lebanese cinema has always carried the weight of history, telling stories of war, memory, displacement, and survival. But with her new film Bornstars, writer-director Caroline Labaki dares to pivot the lens. Instead of national trauma, she captures the everyday chaos of young adulthood in Lebanon: messy, hopeful, absurd, and deeply human.
The film follows JD, a Lebanese-American senior at AUP, who has ten days to find $7,000 or drop out of university. With the help of his misfit crew, JD hatches Lebanon’s most outrageous scheme: launching the country’s first porn website. Inspired by cult classics like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Superbad, and Risky Business, Bornstars is a rebellious coming-of-age comedy that challenges taboos while celebrating the fearless spirit of youth.
As Labaki herself writes:
“There is a silence when it comes to youth-centered storytelling in Lebanon and it’s loud.”
That silence is what Bornstars is determined to break, bringing to screen the anxieties, contradictions, and chaotic energy of a generation growing up in a country where the future often feels impossible to imagine.
Co-writer Toni Eli Kanaan reflects on the grueling journey behind the film:
“It shouldn’t take 10 years to make a movie, but in Lebanon it does. The industry is broken, the system barely exists, and getting a film off the ground here is like running into a wall over and over again. Bornstars only exists because we were too stubborn to quit.
I’m not proud it took this long, it doesn’t mean we were slow. It means the environment makes you fight for every frame. What I am proud of is the commitment and the ABSURD, relentless consistency it took to survive the rejections, the dead ends, the funding gaps. We just kept showing up when it made no sense to.
If anything, I hope this premiere proves it’s possible. If this film can break through, then maybe the next one will take five years, not ten. Maybe it opens a door for the next filmmaker, the next story. Because Lebanon needs more stories, and more doors.”
Bornstars — Credits:
Starring: Tony Eli Kanaan, Nour Hajjar, Ziad Saliba, Elie Njeim
Produced by: Chady Eli Mattar, Scott C. Silver
Directed by: Caroline Labaki
Written by: Tony Eli Kanaan & Caroline Labaki
Director of Photography: Fady Kassem
Editor: Elie Choufani, Scott C. Silver
Production Designer: Joseph Khoury
Sound Design: Elia Haddad
Music: Danny Bou Maroun
Production Companies: Silvatar Media, Berytus Films
