"Caramel is the idea of sweet and salt, sugary and sour, of the delicious sugar that can burn or hurt you." - filmmaker Nadine Labaki

Sugar, water and lemon juice - for the workers and friends who inhabit a Beirut beauty salon it's not for eating, but for removing unwanted body hair, and it comes not without a little pain. For five friends, the salon is a place to gather and talk about the universal issues that face women: relationships, sex, ageing, religion and their place in the world.

Dedicating the film to "her Beirut", director Nadine Labaki gives us a warm and syrupy romantic comedy with a Lebanese twist.

"Caramel has an optimism born not of dreamy romanticism but of resilience and a degree of hard-headedness." - New York Times