Hereafter, Together

Director's Statement

I made Hereafter, Together with the intent for it to feel like the experience of praying while processing a deep rooted pain, and the conflicting feelings that arise from this.

In 2023, I spent a month in Lebanon and flew home on October 7th. In the months and years that followed, I grieved losses among friends and family, while watching people I love in Lebanon endure their own tragedies. We kept in touch, consoling each other during these times.

The film explores the impossibilities that intimacy allows for: the intimacy of romance, prayer, family, and grief. It asks: how can we connect during times like these?

The film is quiet, meditative, imperfect, but reaching toward something. Two people trying to reach each other, while the pain they carry remains present in the room.

In a media landscape often shaped by argument, politics, spectacle, and flattened depictions of each other's cultures, I wanted to make a work of art that is far more human.

Through prayers, fades, transitions, and overlapping images, the film searches for interconnectedness while still allowing for silence, guarded truths, and fractured moments together.