Directed by Jack Janssen • Documentary • 2004 • 80 minutes
For half a century, the Lebanese singer Fairuz has been a living legend in the Arab world. Her home is Beirut, once a thriving seaport known as "the Paris of the Middle East," and a haven for those fleeing religious or ethnic persecution. In 1975, however, a civil war that was to rage for fifteen years disrupted this idyllic situation. Throughout the civil war Fairuz remained in Beirut, and everyone - whether Christian, Muslim, left-wing or right-wing, people from all the groups that were murdering each other - continued to love this singer with the nightingale voice.
WE LOVED EACH OTHER SO MUCH portrays the love of diverse Beirut inhabitants for this diva. Through the music, and the myths that grew around Fairuz, they tell their life stories, and narrate the tragic, stirring history of their city. Their reminiscences, combined with Fairuz' songs and her story, provide a moving commentary on Lebanon's tumultuous history, traces of which are still visible in Beirut's devastated cityscape and bullet-scared building.
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