Lebanon may be known more for its civil strife than its fledgling movie industry, but Nadine Labakih hopes to change all that. The director-actress is out to transform the way the world sees her native country. So far, so good. Her debut feature film “Caramel” did more to overhaul Lebanon's bullet-punctured image than a dozen million-dollar public relation campaigns. A sweet love story set in a Beirut beauty salon, “Caramel” was a surprise hit, seducing audiences from New York to Buenos Aires, a surprise for a country with almost no film industry to speak of. “I don't know one (Lebanese) person who doesn't travel with four or five DVDs of ‘Caramel' and they give it to all the people they know abroad,” said Labaki, who wrote, directed and starred in the 2007 movie. “It's has become a sort of ambassador for Lebanon.” So it was with some trepidation that Labaki undertook her follow-up project “Where Do We Go Now?,” a bittersweet comedy about women bent on keeping their hotheaded men out of harm's way. As the movie's Sept. 22 Lebanese debut approaches, the pressure is mounting. “I'm a little bit anxious,” the 37-year-old raven-haired beauty told The Associated Press in an interview in Paris. “Now everybody's expecting this one, and they're expecting it to be even better” than “Caramel.” Labaki needn't fret. “Where Do We Go Now?” garnered rave reviews at this year's Cannes Film Festival, where it screened on the margins of the official competition, and won a lengthy standing ovation at the Toronto Film Festival.
