Saab (1948–2019) began her career as a documentary filmmaker reporting on the Middle East for French television before the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War returned her to her home in Beirut. While covering the war as an independent journalist, she produced fifteen films, including her three most famous: Beirut, Never Again (1976); Letter from Beirut (1978); and Beirut, My City (1982). (Two of these feature writings by Lebanese poet and artist Etel Adnan, a longtime Bay Area resident who died last November.) Focusing particularly on the plight of children, often evoking comparisons to Roberto Rossellini’s war films, these films, known collectively as “The Beirut Trilogy,” find Saab developing the more impressionistic style of essay film that would characterize the next few decades of her career. Speaking about the trilogy near the end of her life, Saab described Beirut, My City as “one of the most important of my films, the one I hold closest to my heart.”