The Day of Wrath: Tales from Tripoli sheds light on five moments of uprising and political turmoil across different historical eras of the city of Tripoli, Lebanon. Spanning the period from 1943 to today, the film reflects on the political and social transformations that have shaped the city. Conceived as a documentary in the form of a city symphony, it blends individual and collective histories to explore Tripoli’s evolving identity through the lenses of class relations and generational shifts. Throughout the film, the director writes a long letter addressed to her deceased father, weaving an intimate, intergenerational reflection on history, memory, and transmission. Tripoli’s trajectory resonates with many Arab cities:
the forties carried the desire for liberation from colonialism, the fifties the dream of pan-Arabism, the sixties disillusionment and defeat, the eighties the rise of radical Islamism, and recent years renewed attempts at revolution beginning with the Arab Spring.
Rather than offering easy conclusions, the film seeks ways to reflect on this history in order to imagine how to remain political and how to contribute to change today.