Bosta(English:The AutobusArabic:Bosta— بوسطة) is a 2005 Lebanese film by the director Philippe Aractingi. Bosta is a story of young Lebanese artists who meet again, after being separated, and tour different cities of Lebanon in an old bus, performing a techno version of the dabkeh that shocks conservatives, but moves forward towards the future. Simon Emmerson and Martin Russell from the group, Afro Celt Sound System composed original music for the dabkeh (dance) sequences and composed the film’s underscore respectively.

Fifteen years after a traumatic explosion in his native Beirut, Kamal Maf’ouss returns from France, where he was nationalized and become a composer-choreographer. He reassembles youth friend… Read allFifteen years after a traumatic explosion in his native Beirut, Kamal Maf’ouss returns from France, where he was nationalized and become a composer-choreographer. He reassembles youth friends from his late pa’s multicultural school. They pimp a decommissioned school bus to tour t… Read allFifteen years after a traumatic explosion in his native Beirut, Kamal Maf’ouss returns from France, where he was nationalized and become a composer-choreographer. He reassembles youth friends from his late pa’s multicultural school. They pimp a decommissioned school bus to tour the country in preparation of Lebanon’s annual festival of the choral dance-song genre Debk… Read all

This film starts with an old man holding up traffic and taking a pee, right in the middle of the road, on a car battery to get it started. I thought for 35 minutes inward that this was a bad comedy, I thought it had way too much music queues, (not singing just background music or Alia singing into a microphone for a recording) but yet all that time I thought so differently from what this movie actually is.Without any knowledge of what this movie was about going in, I could not possibly tell you early in the film that this is a Musical Drama, with themes of both the aftermath of the Lebanese Civil War and creativity in dance. As a viewer outside of the Middle East you can probably tell now this movie threw me off guard a bit.The acting in this movie is not very good, not horrible by any means, but noticeable. I liked some of the music, mainly the dabkes oddly enough I found them quite enjoyable. The songs in this musical however are quite bad, mostly unimportant and seem like filler. They could’ve made this film better by only having the actual dance scenes as the music.Speaking of which, the “score” or “Soundtrack” or whatever you would want to call it (ambient noise mixed with queues of a woman singing) are very odd. There is a lot of landscape shots of the Lebanon countryside and city shots that have this exact same queue over and over again. It often looks and sounds like a horror film at times whenever these shots occur, or at the least the use of these queues are just inappropriate with their frequency and even timing in a lot of scenes.The rest of the movies elements are in the actual story, which I shall sum up as a troupe of dancers are dancing this new form of the traditional dabke, and while I didn’t really get it in the beginning of the film, which is just confusing, this difference really made a showing at the wedding scene later on, where they perform and tick a lot of traditional older men off. They essentially then have a dance off and its not the worst thing. It was a bit of fun.I won’t tell the ending of course. But I will say overall the story while its not great is probably the best thing with the movie alongside the dabke music if you like it. (If you don’t, avoid this film like the plague) So I can give it a mediocre rating, it’s not the worst thing I’ve seen, not nearly.