"May the War be Remembered but Not Repeated": Engendering Peace in Nadine Labaki's Where Do We Go Now?

Set in a remote village that is home to both Muslims and Christians, Nadine Labaki's film, Where Do We Go Now? (2011), recounts the story of a band of women who resolve to wage peace in the face of escalating sectarian tensions. Fearing that armed conflict would spread to their village, the women conspire to prevent their men from exterminating one another. Drawing on studies of mothering, humor, and space, this paper provides an analysis of Labaki's film. I argue that the film represents a creative intervention that seeks to draw out the "exemplary significance" of the Lebanese Civil War, highlighting the dangers of sectarianism, violence, and fear of the "Other." Staging an alternative discourse of possibility—one that engenders communal repair, responsibility, and creative intervention—the narrative articulates the necessity of, to quote Paul Ricoeur, "find[ing] the future of the past, the unfulfilled potential of the past."