Salma Hayek in Lebanon to launch Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, pays tribute to the poet

Salma Hayek in front of a statue of the poet Kahlil Gibran, outside the Gibran Museum in Lebanon. Salma Hayek Press Office / HO / AFP

Salma Hayek is in Lebanon, her first visit to her ancestral homeland, to launch Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, the animated feature film she co-produced and lent her voice to.

The actress visited the picturesque mountain village of Bcharre in the north of the country on Sunday to pay homage to Gibran, a Lebanese-born poet who wrote the book on which the movie is based.

“Let us have a private moment in this place that we dreamt so long to be a part of,” Hayek said before entering the Gibran Museum.

The Prophet, written in 1923, has inspired generations of artists. It consists of poems about love, joy, sorrow, work and spirituality, and has been translated into at least 40 languages. Gibran – who moved to the United States in the late 1890s and died there in 1931 – was also a sculptor and painter influenced by the English Romantics.

Hayek posed with a sculpture of Gibran outside the museum and dipped her feet in nearby mountain-spring waters before visiting his tomb and viewing his work.

The film's director Roger Allers, who also directed Disney's Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, accompanied Hayek.

“I have been living with the spirit of Gibran for the last three years and it has been a very intimate experience, and now to come to his home is very moving,” he said.

The film tells the story of a friendship between a young girl and an imprisoned poet. This framing device is used to tell eight individual stories from The Prophet, each of which was produced by a different animator, one of whom is the UAE's Mohammed Saeed Harib.

Quoting from Gibran’s book, Allers said: “‘Work is love made visible.’ And I really feel that about this movie.”

The film debuts on Thursday in Lebanon. Distributor Mohammed Fadallah said it will be showing in 20 theatres there before a wider release in the Arabian Gulf region and North Africa. It earned praise last year when it debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Hayek arrived in Lebanon on Friday. The Mexican-American actress’s paternal grandfather was Lebanese and immigrated to Mexico.