Do You Love Me
Director: Lana Daher | Year: 2026 | Runtime: 75 minutes | Genre: Documentary | Rating: 7.75/10
Why Lebanon's missing archive became the entire film
Do You Love Me isn't built around a narrator or thesis statement—it's built around absence. Director Lana Daher spent years hunting down 70 years of film reels, television broadcasts, home videos, and personal photographs to reconstruct something Lebanon never officially preserved: its own memory. No national archive exists. That's not a minor administrative gap. It's the premise.
What she assembles from these scattered, unofficial fragments reads closer to a love letter than a history lesson. A portrait of a nation's collective psyche told entirely through images that citizens chose to keep for themselves, not for institutions. Joy, intimacy, destruction, and grief sit side by side—unmedited, exactly as they survived. The thing nobody mentions about archival documentaries is how much they depend on what didn't get saved. In Lebanon's case, that absence becomes the film's actual argument.
The production network behind seven decades of footage
The infrastructure behind Do You Love Me reflects unusual ambition for an archival project. Co-produced by Films de Force Majeure, Wood Water Films, and My Little Films—with backing spanning Lebanon, France, Germany, and Qatar—this wasn't a shoestring operation hunting through family attics. That multi-country backing almost certainly explains how Daher managed to track down, license, and arrange footage without a central institutional vault to draw from. Just hunting. For years.
The film premiered at Venice Days in September 2025, then moved through a serious festival circuit: IDFA, Doclisboa, Cairo, Marrakech, Hamburg, Göteborg, and New Directors/New Films at Film at Lincoln Center and MoMA. Variety reported that Icarus Films acquired U.S. and Canadian distribution rights—a signal that real arthouse infrastructure stands behind this release. Germany's Rapid Eye Movies is handling theatrical distribution there. The U.S. premiere lands at SXSW in March 2026, with a New York screening confirmed for July 10, 2026.
That kind of festival footprint doesn't happen by accident. It signals critical attention—the 7.75/10 on IMDb will likely shift once broader audiences catch it during the 2026 theatrical window. Check Movie OTT for updated ratings across aggregators as the release expands.
How Daher structured a non-chronological history
Here's what strikes me about the formal choice: Daher could've organized 70 years of footage into a march through Lebanon's wars and recoveries. That would've been the obvious move. Easier to follow. More "historical." She doesn't do that.
Instead, the film functions more like memory itself—nonlinear, associative, occasionally overwhelming in the best way. Footage of Beirut in ordinary joy cuts against images of destruction, with no narrator telling you how to feel about it. No chronology imposing meaning. That structural refusal is radical, because it treats the footage—and the people who preserved it—as the archive's true authority. Not the state. Not institutions. Citizens.
Archival documentaries live or die by curation. The question isn't whether footage exists. It's whether arranging it feels emotionally true rather than just informational. What's working here is how Daher sidesteps the trap of turning this into a survey. She's making an argument: that memory is a political act, especially in places where the state opted out of preserving it.
If you've watched documentaries like Sans Soleil or The Act of Killing—films where form itself carries the argument—this sits in that tradition. Found footage rearranged into something closer to essay or poem than report. No filler. Seventy-five minutes, and the film uses every one of them.
Where and when to watch Do You Love Me
The SXSW premiere in March 2026 will be the first major U.S. theatrical window. After that comes the New York screening on July 10, 2026, followed by wider arthouse distribution through Icarus Films. That's the standard release pattern for this label—cinema and institutional screenings first, streaming windows later in the cycle.
Check Movie OTT's where-to-watch tracker for the most current platform availability, since streaming announcements tend to follow theatrical runs by several months. The site monitors all major OTT services and updates the moment new availability is confirmed—useful if you're waiting for this to land on a specific platform. Hard to say exactly when that happens, but Icarus releases typically hit VOD or subscription services within 6–9 months after theatrical distribution wraps.
Who should actually watch this
Anyone drawn to documentary filmmaking that treats form as argument will find Do You Love Me worth full attention. If you're following Lebanese cinema, or interested in how communities preserve identity when institutions fail them—this is essential. It's also the kind of film that demands a phone-free 75 minutes. No skipping. No distraction.
Track the release schedule through Movie OTT starting March 2026, when SXSW programming is announced and the theatrical window opens.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Who directed Do You Love Me?
Lana Daher, working across a co-production structure involving Lebanon, France, Germany, and Qatar. That multi-country backing gave her the resources to license and assemble seven decades of archival material from private sources.
Q: Where can I watch it?
SXSW premiere in March 2026. New York theatrical screening July 10, 2026. Broader streaming availability to follow. Check Movie OTT for the moment VOD and subscription services add it.
Q: Is this related to the 1946 film with the same title?
No connection. The 1946 film is an American Technicolor musical directed by Gregory Ratoff. Daher's documentary is a completely separate 2025/2026 Lebanese production.
Q: How long is it?
75 minutes. Lean. Every minute counts.
Q: What festivals has it screened at?
Venice Days (September 2025), IDFA, Doclisboa, Cairo International Film Festival, Marrakech, Hamburg, Göteborg, New Directors/New Films. SXSW U.S. premiere scheduled for March 2026.