A vivid love letter to the 1980s and one woman’s struggle to overcome the challenges of immigration.
Beirut, 1984. Muna kisses Halim for the last time, before he evaporates in a dusty haze of street fighting. Two years later, she and her eight-year-old son Omar move to Montreal, at the beginning of winter, into an apartment too small for them. While she is a very successful phone salesperson of boxed diets, the young single mother is preoccupied with her child, who is always alone at school and at home, and who hides a deep sadness. In the evening, when Muna is decompressing, Halim’s ghost slips into her bathroom, embraces her and talks to her. Will she ever be able to reconstruct the story of her husband’s disappearance and console Omar?
It is through meeting other immigrant women that Muna will find the stability she needs to face her past. A true tribute to the perseverance of migrant mothers, Hotline offers a breath of humanity in a tender language.