The Karantina Trilogy is a body of film work by Panos Aprahamian, tracing the ecology and history of Karantina, Beirut’s former quarantine district. Situated at the mouth of the Beirut River, Karantina is often described as liminal space – a place at the heart of the city and also outside of its purview – and a witness to histories of political and ecological violence. Across three films made between 2021 and 2025, Aprahamian bridges documentary and fiction to consider forms of extraction and brutality inflicted on human and nonhuman bodies and the city’s waterways.

Odorless Blue Flowers Awake Prematurely
2021

For many inhabitants of this world, dystopia is not a future possibility but a historical reality. In the film, which Aprahamian describes as “dystopian nonfiction” or “a science-fiction documentary”, we encounter Beirut’s peripheral rustbelt that sits on the banks of the city’s river and the devastating consequences of the Beirut Port blast of August 4, 2020.

This Haunting Memory That Is Not My Own
2021

Through semi-fictional storytelling, This Haunting Memory That Is Not My Own shines a light on how economic growth and environmental decay come together in moments of social and ecological injustice. The film addresses exploitation and violence inflicted on human and nonhuman bodies, with a focus on the ecosystem along the shorelines of Beirut and the city’s port. It centres on the Karantina district, a dumping ground for the unwanted—things and bodies alike.

More Spilled Blood Than Drinkable Water
2025

More Spilled Blood Than Drinkable Water is a short film that moves between documentary realism and speculative fiction. A disembodied voice leads viewers along the Beirut River into an underworld of chemical traces, spectral echoes and unseen presences in a dystopian landscape of flows and stagnations.

More Spilled Blood Than Drinkable Water is produced by the Han Nefkens Foundation, in collaboration with Museu Tàpies, Barcelona; Art Jameel, Dubai; Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), Manila; NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore; WIELS, Brussels, and Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina (MADRE), Naples.

Panos Aprahamian (b. 1986) is a Berlin-based unfiction filmmaker, media artist and writer from Beirut’s peripheral rustbelt. Through image, sound and language, his practice explores the spectral presence of the future-past in undead bodies, sacrifice zones and social relations. He studied at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts and the University of the Arts London, graduating with an MA in Documentary Film in 2015. Aprahamian was a Caspian Arts scholar in 2015 and a fellow at Ashkal Alwan’s Home Workspace Program between 2017 and 2018. He is the winner of the Ecumenical Prize at the 2022 Oberhausen Short Film Festival, recipient of the Eliza Moore fellowship for artistic excellence in 2024, and the Han Nefkens Foundation—Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art grantee for the 2024-2026 cycle. He currently teaches at the American University of Beirut in the Media Studies Program.

 

 

 

 

 

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