TIFF Lightbox, Cinema 2

Screening with Do You Love Me, same date/time/venue.

Film Details: 17 minutes | Directed by Aya Chouaib, Julie Mallet | Short Documentary | 2026 | Lebanon | Canadian Premiere

Screening with Do You Love Me

Synopsis:  Every Grain of Dirt documents life in South Lebanon under ongoing threats of displacement and war. As sweeping evacuation orders force over a million people from their homes, some choose to remain. Among them is Ismail, a shepherd who refuses to leave his village — even as bulldozers arrive to erase it, nearly burying him alive as he stands in defiance before the machine.

Filmed by three women who enter an active war zone to document these stories, the film moves between intimate testimony and a landscape under siege.

Through the voices of those who remain — and those who return — the documentary traces the persistent bond between people and land. It examines how land becomes a frontline: not only of war, but of identity, survival, and resistance against forces that seek to uproot and erase.

In every grain of dirt, a history persists; in every refusal to leave, a quiet act of resistance.