Key figure of contemporary Lebanese cinema, along with Khalil Joreige, with whom she has worked in partnership since the beginning of her career, Joana Hadjithomas studied (already with Joreige) in France and in the USA. She (and Koreige of course) both graduated from the University of Nanterre and, later, from New York (in Film Direction). Hadjithomas and Joreige worked between Paris and Beirut, making shorts first, then features from 1999 on. Their work is a favorite of the Festival circuit and has received several awards, notably the "Montgolfière d'Argent" for A Perfect Day (2005). Their theme is invariably modern Lebanon, from its reconstruction in their satiric first feature film Autour de la maison rose (1999) to the new destructions of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War as witnessed by Catherine Deneuve in Je veux voir (2008).