What follows is less a journey through the city than a drift through the inner life of a man standing at the edge of himself. Between destiny and desertion, Cherri explores the body as a battlefield: trained to obey, shaped by authority, yet still capable of slipping away from command. The night becomes a suspended space, where the soldier is no longer only a figure of strength, but one of fragility, doubt and rupture.
With La Sentinelle, Cherri continues his meditation on violence, survival and the haunted architecture of militarised bodies. In just one night, he finds the drama of a lifetime: the desire to disappear, if only briefly, from the machinery of duty.
AM: How does it feel to return to the festival?
Ali Cherri: For any filmmaker, having a film shown at Cannes is a major opportunity, because it is a festival where so many professionals from around the world gather over just a few days. Your film is seen by people from across the industry. On a personal level, this is my second time here. I first came with The Dam in 2022, and that experience gave me a new energy, a certain light, something positive that I really needed at the time.
AM: Your first feature, The Dam, was made under difficult circumstances, with the war in Sudan. Was the context similar this time?
Ali Cherri: Unfortunately, the war has not stopped. But I think this has now become the regular condition for many films being prepared in the region. I have many friends developing films to shoot in Lebanon, and they all have to adapt their scripts or their locations depending on the situation. I think this has become part of the condition of making films: we always have to adapt to reality, accept it and remain flexible.
AM: Did those circumstances affect the production of La Sentinelle?
Ali Cherri: Actually, this was one of the easiest films I have made. After The Dam, I made The The Watchman, which was shot on the demarcation line between Northern and Southern Cyprus, in the buffer zone between the two sides. There was a military presence, and we had to build a watchtower, which created a lot of tension and required negotiations with different authorities. This time, I wanted to shoot in a studio precisely to have a certain freedom, both in terms of the shooting schedule and in terms of what I wanted to create. I chose a kind of bubble, in order to avoid some of the difficulties I had experienced on my previous films.
AM: Was there a positive moment from the shoot that stayed with you?
Ali Cherri: It was a very pleasant shoot. The most positive thing was that it was the first time I worked with professional actors: Eric Cantona and Nahuel Pérez Biscayart. Georges Torbey is not a professional actor, but what was beautiful was the synergy that emerged between all of them. You write things on paper without knowing whether they will actually work, and then suddenly you see the actors together and realise the intuition was right. For me, that was the greatest satisfaction: imagining something and then seeing the chemistry truly happen.
AM: La Sentinelle explores the world of soldiers and military discipline. Were you interested in deconstructing ideas of masculinity and strength?
Ali Cherri: Of course, that is one of the themes of the film. The army is built on that principle, even though today many women also join the military. Originally, the idea is that you erase your individuality in order to become part of one single body: the body of the army.
You also give up a large part of your personal freedom. You accept that decisions about your life and death are no longer entirely in your own hands. There is also this imperative of performance, masculinity, strength and readiness. Your body has to be disciplined, ready to fight, and perhaps ready to die.
That is what I was trying to deconstruct: this demand placed on our bodies to become disciplined bodies, and the question of how certain bodies can escape that authority.
AM: How different was it to work with professional actors compared to your previous experiences with non-professional performers?
Ali Cherri: I like working with non-professional actors because it is very intuitive. My previous leading actors were people I met and immediately had a strong feeling about. Working with professional actors is very different. They need things to be explained clearly: not only the scene itself, but also the depth of the character and as much context as possible. But my choice of actors was not only about their acting skills. I also wanted people who carry their own personal history, and the history of their bodies. Eric Cantona is a pop icon. People still stop him in the street 30 years after his retirement from football. Nahuel and Georges are also politically engaged, particularly when it comes to cinema, Palestine and liberation. It was important to me that they arrived on set already carrying a certain image with them.
AM: How do you feel about representing Lebanese cinema at Cannes, especially at a time when Arab and Lebanese representation remains limited?
Ali Cherri: I do not want to feel that I represent an entire nation. I can barely represent myself. Of course, I am happy to be here. I am from Beirut; that is where I grew up, and that is my experience. Even when I am not filming in Lebanon, it remains my reference. Even if the subject is not directly linked to Lebanon, everything I do relates in some way to what is happening in my country.
For me, it is about trying to speak about things that many Lebanese people have gone through: violence, what violence does to our bodies, trauma and survival. I lived through the Lebanese Civil War and all the other wars that followed. This idea that we have survived so much, and what it means to survive, is something that deeply informs my work.
AM: What are you working on next?
Ali Cherri: I have already started writing a feature film. After Cannes, in July, I am taking a month off to finish the screenplay. The film will be shot in Lebanon, where I have not filmed for almost 13 years. It is still in development, but it is also a story about a soldier. I am building a trilogy around the figure of the soldier, and this will be the third part, centred on a Lebanese soldier.