A Frown Gone Mad

Director Omar Mismar in person, introduced by Farihah Zaman

Dir. Omar Mismar. 2024, 71 mins. Lebanon. DCP. In Arabic with English subtitles. In a beauty salon in Beirut, one client after another sits in Bouba‘s chair seeking cosmetic treatment. Some know what they want, others submit to her blunt assessments. Then Bouba goes to work. Omar Mismar’s uniquely mesmerizing film consists entirely of close-ups fixed on clients’ faces, keeping Bouba largely out of view while her squirm-inducing injections and manipulations to others’ faces fill the screen. Throughout, chitchat drifts magnetically to war, to what’s going on in Israel-Palestine, to where in the city bombs have recently been dropped (i.e. exactly how close). A work of real-life body horror that’s also a tender portrait of communal defiance, A Frown Gone Mad makes an awfully strong impression. Regardless of one’s interest in or appetite for Botox and fillers, what’s on display are assertive spectacles of control where it’s otherwise terrifyingly absent. North American premiere 

Tickets: $17.50 / $12 senior and students / $10 youth (ages 3–17) / free for MoMI members at the Senior/Student level and above. There is a $1.50 transaction fee per ticket for all online purchases. The cost of admission may be applied toward a same-day purchase of a membership. 

Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission. 

About the filmmaker:

Omar Mismar is a Beirut-based visual artist. Project-driven and medium promiscuous, he takes up conflict and its representation as they inform the everyday via form deliberations, material interventions, and translation strategies, using the performative as gesture and rehearsal. These investigations have produced a dérive through form—from performance, film, and installation to photography, sculpture, and mosaics.