À droite le couteau - FOCUS #12

À droite le couteau is a portrait of a suburban neighborhood in a small French town between 1989 and 2001 seen through the reunion of two sisters. While the echoes of wars hover over the lives and imaginations of the neighborhood residents, the shared experience of two sisters unfolds, alongside their strikingly different paths.

Each is guided by a guardian figure who appears whenever reality strikes. Majda, the eldest who remains in the neighborhood until her death, is accompanied by Rabia Al Adawiya, an Iraqi poet and great Sufi mystic of the 8th century. Etel Adnan, a lesbian poet and painter born in Beirut in 1925, appears to Rim, the younger sister, as she experiences her first stirrings of love.