Lea is a 30 year old transsexual, a shemale, in the Hamra district of Beirut. In Liban, transsexuality is prohibited by law. The transgender community is constantly threatened which leads her to live at night, working as an escort girl and locked in her apartment at the Hotel Stars. She refuses to be a victim of her condition and finds a way to an existence that resembles as much as possible a 'normal' life, the life of everyone...

Meanwhile in Beirut

With this new film, Felipe Monroy, a Colombian director living in Geneva, continues his work on the memory of his country. Back in Bogota after many years of absence, he starts revisiting his family’s past, tinged with a violence that echoes that of an entire nation. So, as the peace process then ongoing between FARC and government is perhaps about to turn the page after more than 50 years of war, the director starts his own effort at reconciliation, of which the film is both the instrument and the result. What can be done with poorly healed wounds? And what place can film take in this perilous exercise in forgiveness? It is simultaneously as son, brother, Colombian and filmmaker that Felipe Monroy tackles these questions and there lies the beauty of the film. It manages to look at the ghosts of the past straight in the eyes, adopting the contradictory sentiments that it provokes in its author and that it invites us to share.

Los fantasmas del caribe

Between 2002 and 2010, more than 10,000 civilians were killed by the Colombian army and thrown into mass graves—with the aim of demonstrating the success of the offensive against the FARC. Felipe Monroy offers a voice to the families of the victims of this unpunished state crime, thereby creating a heartrending film that stands against the worst crime of all: oblivion.