After filmmaker, musician and artist Nick Mery visited his ancestors’ homeland in Lebanon in 2018, he came back with hours of footage from a video camera he brought along… and a realization.
“It’s like a missing piece of the puzzle of yourself, that suddenly that piece is filled and you see a bigger picture,” Mery explained.
He took the footage and those feelings and channeled them into “In Dreams,” a five minute portrait of the Lebanon and the village where his great-grandfather lived a century ago before migrating to Mexico and South Texas. The short film, he said, is “an extension of my soul.”
With music by the San Antonio-based AM Architect, and poetic narration by Mery himself, the film debuted in 2022 and went on to win several awards at festivals, including Best Documentary at the Lebanese Independent Film Festival (Lebanon), Best Short Documentary at the Tokyo Film Awards, Best Documentary at the Los Angeles-based New Media Film Festival, and Best Travel Film at the New York Smart Film Festival.
Seeing the current conflict in Lebanon, Mery said he is “at a loss for words,” and that by releasing his film to the public now, he hopes people see the beauty in the country, and that it reminds people to “not only appreciate a place that maybe they’ve never seen, but also remind them to really appreciate what they have around them and what they’re building around themselves as well.”
Watch “In Dreams” in the embedded video below. Then, read on for TPR's longer interview with filmmaker Nick Mery.
Nathan Cone: You’ve said you’re a documentary filmmaker, but it almost feels like this film is kind of a portrait. There's a poetry that goes into it. How would you characterize your film, “In Dreams?”
Nick Mery: "In Dreams" was a sort of extension of my soul, almost when it came to how I felt when I experienced being in Lebanon for the first time and sort of retreading the steps of my own ancestors and being in the village that my great-grandfather and his siblings migrated from in order to come to America come to America and start their lives here about 100 years ago.
Cone: So that's where the film takes the viewer. Is that your literal ancestral home, where your family is from?
Mery: Yeah, the film itself is a five minute sort of short documentary exploration of my time in Lebanon. It's kind of an amalgamation. And like you said, it's sort of put together in a way that is almost kind of dreamlike, which I feel best represents my time spent there, right? I was there for about two weeks, and I shot the sort of trek from America to Lebanon, and then from landing in Lebanon, going into the village, which was a trek itself. It was a sort of mountain village at the base of Mount Lebanon. And it was not even really on the map, one of those places where you just sort of had to ask the driver, in broken English if he knew, if he had heard of the village. And then you get in a car, and you just sort of hope that you that it's all working out, but it very much did, and I ended up meeting some estranged family there that I had never met, but who had sort of stayed there and continued to build the legacy and continue life in the Middle East.
Every person knows what it feels like to be called to something and be drawn to something that's sort of bigger than them.Nick Mery
Cone: If I remember correctly, was your trip part of a church group? How did it come about?
Mery: So essentially, when my family migrated here, they mostly came into Mexico, and then some of them, I think, were in McAllen, but all sort of migrated north into San Antonio. Roots were laid down here, and the community sort of started to build here. And there's one church [Saint George Maronite Church], that was built when that family came, and the church is just about to celebrate its 100 year anniversary, I think next year, in 2025 so basically it's the hub of Lebanese culture in South Texas. This is the church that my family belongs to. And so an opportunity came up, and… it provided an opportunity to travel over there if certain criteria were met, and if all parties involved were in agreement that it would be beneficial.
Cone: What was your initial impression upon disembarking and setting foot in this country?
Mery: I've been absorbed in the Lebanese culture my entire life. I was born into a Lebanese-American family. I have hundreds of cousins and aunts and uncles and family members in San Antonio alone, let alone Texas the greater America, and then Mexico as well, hundreds and hundreds of people. And it's just sort of been the thread throughout my life that has guided me into who I am, why I am, and these other things, and the feeling of approaching it, and the feeling of arriving to this place, putting your feet on the ground of this place, and standing on the earth that not just my great-grandfather stood, or my family once was, but… this is a place that, you're with a tour guide, and the tour guide is like, “to your right, that's the cave that Jesus performed one of his miracles in the Bible.
And then to your left, that's Byblos, the first city on Earth,” you know? And this is all in Lebanon. It's almost overwhelming, in a way, to think about America being 200 and some change years old, and then you're going to these places that are thousands and thousands of years old. It's bigger than you can really explain until you're there and the way you feel just becomes the explanation of it without words, right? It transcends our ability to communicate. That's kind of… what inspired the film that I made, to try to relay that feeling to those of us who have never been or even if you're not in my family, if you have never been to Lebanon, if you watch my film, I hope that you can get a taste of what it felt like to be there.
Cone: Yeah. I mean, when you watch your film… I think that there, is something that folks can relate to about being in that place of where those who came before you, whence they came from, right?
Mery: It's like a missing piece of the puzzle of yourself that suddenly that piece is filled, and you see a bigger picture. Anybody can take a vacation and have a great time… Lebanon is a beautiful place. It's got beaches and snowy mountains within a day’s journey of each other. You can start the day skiing and you can end the day on the beach, right? Lebanon is a paradise in a lot of ways, but to go there with the feeling of learning about the sort of roots of yourself and getting to really experience that is hard to explain, but I think every person knows what it feels like to be called to something and be drawn to something that's sort of bigger than them, that it's outside of the words that we really know how to describe.
Cone: Is it accurate or is it true that Lebanon is if not one of, [but] the most religiously diverse country in the Middle Eastern area. Is that still the case?
Mery: So Lebanon is primarily split right now, I think. And you know, it changes every day, but it's pretty split between Christian and Muslim. I myself am of the Maronite Catholic, which is the Christian side of it. And then there's the Muslim side of it, too. We're talking about a place that has access to the water and one of the most important access points in the world. This is why Lebanon hosts [Byblos], what's considered the first city on Earth. It’s because people just sort of realized that congregating in this area was just beneficial to growth and existence in general, right? And so I think that because of that, it was such an access point to the world that, without question, at some point, it had to have been the most culturally diverse place.
Cone: So how does your faith shape your relationship to the country and in this place?
Mery: It’s an interesting question, and I think this has a lot more to do with me as a 39-year-old man than it does with how I was raised, or where I am, or what I've claimed religiously, right? But I think that being raised in the Lebanese culture, the church was the hub of that. And so to be Maronite Catholic is just as much a part of my identity as to be from Texas, to be from San Antonio, my name and my religion are all just sort of like a part of the blueprint of who I am as a person. And I think that it's easy to get those things sort of confused where you were raised in a religion, and you don't even question it, like it's just a part of my identity as much as anything else. Like I said, I don't question my own name and I don't question the religion that I was raised in.
Right now, I cannot say that my journey through 39 years has been linear in the sense that I have never delineated from, like, a straight and narrow path of like, the concept of Christianity or whatever. Of course, I've explored and I've done I probably thought more about a greater power than any other thing I've thought about in life, but I think that it offers me a beacon of connection to the culture of Lebanon, because to go to attend a Maronite Catholic Mass is to attend a Mass that is spoken in not only Arabic, but Aramaic, like the original language on Earth, the language that Jesus spoke. Those things make me feel connected. Those are the lifelines that have kept the community and most of my family sort of together as a culture and a community sort of rooted in Lebanese origins.
And so my religion was always just a part of that. It is where I would go to hear authentic Arabic. It's where I would go to sort of still eat the recipes that were passed down from the mountains of Lebanon that came over on the boat with my family, and they're still with us, right? And so in that way, it's very comforting. I don't know if that counts as me claiming to be a Maronite Catholic, in the sense that I'm just sort of strictly adhering to the doctrines of like modern Christianity, or things like that. I think that the identity of being Maronite Catholic is to sort of steer left of modern Christianity. It's so rooted in tradition, the hymns are spoke like I said, you know you're singing, you're hearing priests singing in Aramaic. There's a detachment from modern life that is almost comforting, in a way, to go back to this church, and hear those hymns and take part in those rituals, because it almost is the way you get to step one foot into Lebanon for an hour, and then to go to Lebanon and attend a Maronite Catholic Mass and hear the same language and hear the same songs, is true connectivity.
Cone: Obviously there's an intense amount of conflict is happening right now that has been happening in some form or fashion for decades over the past second half of the 20th century. So as somebody who's living in America, as a person of faith, and a Christian that's observing these other two factions… this is a very touchy question, I know, but what are your feelings about looking at upon your homeland and what's happening there right now?
Mery: I think it's important for me to again stress that, as an American Lebanese person, I am so far removed from the reality of the conflict that is going on there that I could study it day and night… but even that is like looking at a picture of the ocean, as opposed to being in the ocean, right? Like the conflict and the reality that people are dealing with in that part of the… world… it's heavier and sadder and darker and deeper than anybody really knows how to express, even those of us in my community who are from Lebanon are at a loss for words for the conflict that's happening right now. And what I will say is that even in the time that I spent there, it's one thing to be in a city like Beirut, which is a cultural hub of the world. It's so vibrant.
But… Lebanon, specifically, again, is such an access point that so many people want access to, because, in a lot of ways, like boiling civilization down to its sort of bare bones, to have an entry point in the water is to survive and to have power. And Lebanon has the like, just like that, that great entrant, that great entry point from the Mediterranean Sea, right? And so many countries want that land because of what it has to offer in terms of power that there are just practices in the Middle East that are, you know, I think the word that I use is barbaric. How do you say that as a foreigner? Yeah, like, it's so far removed from me, and it's so unfair for me to look down on a region of the world that doesn't have the same resources. But… it's rooted in power struggles.
Cone: Well, let me ask you this. The title of your documentary portrait is “In Dreams,” and as we've both agreed, it feels kind of dreamlike in when you watch it, it's very beautiful. Do you have a worry that it'll remain in dreams, so to speak?
Mery: How do I want to say this? I think a thing is beautiful because it's finite. You know? Like a thing is beautiful because… not it that it ends, but it has limitations, or that it, it maybe that it ends. Lebanon has the most. It's such a beautiful, vibrant place, and the people are so strong and proud, in spite of decades of turmoil, it strengthens them in a way when you see the Lebanese flag flying, these tattered, war-torn flags that have been flying for decades. You feel the power in that, that this is a country that simply won't fall. It's not the biggest country. It does have its own army, but it's certainly not like a world leader in that sense. But there's a pride and a strength in Lebanon that you don't know until you're there feeling it.
And so when I went to Lebanon, I met my family, and they were living in a village, and the village had been destroyed in a civil war and their village had just been bombed… the Druze, this was a group that was just sort of bombing that area. They thought that one of their enemies was being hidden in this village, and so just on that notion, just bombed a whole village, right? This is the village that my family is in now. And instead of leaving, my family built a shack where they lived for seven years as like seven people in one room, in a shack on the mountain, and then just rebuilt the town. And when I visited, they had just gotten running water. Think of the gift of that running water in their village that they've been rebuilding for like, 15 years, or even more than that, 20 years, or whatever.
So I think that the power of the human spirit is inextinguishable. And Lebanon is no stranger to conflict or strife. It just, it just breaks my heart. It breaks your heart to see such a beautiful place be targeted for its beauty in a way where other people want it, and if they can't have it, then they want to destroy it. We’re not the first two people that have ever sat across from a table and asked, you know, how do you make sense of war? It's something that… all of humanity will be dealing with forever. It's just part of human nature. But I don't, I know that it… it's never going to be the end for Lebanon, but man, just it's heartbreaking to see it going through what it's going through.
Cone: Your film has been making the rounds on the festival circuit for several months now, and has racked up some nice awards. So first, congratulations on that, of course. And so as you release it out into the open for everybody to see, what are your hopes for the film and the general public's reaction to it?
Mery: All I can really hope for is that people look at the film and remember that Lebanon is a beautiful place that it deserves every positive description it's ever received, that it is so vibrant and the strength of the people there too… you know it means a lot to me because of my history there. But it's not that far separated from any person who sees this film and realizes like those are people. They have their lives. There they go about their day, they go to work, they come back to their family. They're proud of where they live, they're proud of who they are. They just want to exist and coexist. That's all they're hoping for, and every time there's another explosion or another attack on it, it's no different from your own friends or family being attacked or hurt or separated from their own communities or their own lives.
We can extend that kindness to each other, to give all people the benefit of the doubt that we deserve to exist and if and when someone watches my film, I hope that for a brief moment they can just sort of like, see the beauty of this place that is sort of… having the beauty removed from it so forcefully right now. And I hope that they can learn how to not only appreciate a place that maybe they've never been, I hope it also reminds them to really appreciate what they have around them and what they're building around themselves as well.
Cone: All right, Nick Mery, thank you so much. I appreciate it, and congratulations on your beautiful film.
Mery: I appreciate it.
