Context is everything, but you probably know that by now. For instance, if New Jersey were the setting for Caramel’s premise about a hair salon where a series of women’s lives intersect, the film might have been indistinguishable from any number of Hollywood chick flicks that may or may not star Queen Latifah. But put it in Beirut and you have something more quietly radical, more culturally particular and potentially more resonant.

Such is the case for this breezy and bittersweet confection, the first feature by 34-year-old Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki. Besides co-writing and directing, Labaki also stars as Layale, the proprietor of a Beirut hair salon whose clients and employees face a variety of crises. Some of their issues — like one vain woman’s anxieties about aging or Layale’s struggle to end an affair with a married man — will be familiar to most western viewers. Others — like another character’s need for a particularly intimate procedure in order to “restore” her virginity before her Muslim wedding — most likely will not.

All of their tales are enriched by the sense that we’re being given a rare look at ordinary women in a place that’s generally portrayed in very different terms, if it’s portrayed at all. Caramel also provides a view of Beirut in what would turn out to be an equally rare period of optimism for the city. The film was made in between Syria’s partial relinquishing of control over the country in 2005 and Israel’s bombing campaign of Hezbollah targets in 2006.

In an interview last fall at TIFF — where Caramel was selected as a gala on the heels of a very successful premiere at Cannes — Labaki reflects on the spirit that her film inadvertently captured. “Even though the situation was very tense, there was hope,” she says. “There was a feeling that the political situation was going to change. So that gave me a sense of defiance and wanting to change the world.

“Of course, as soon as I finished shooting, the war broke out again. So you have this moment where you don’t really know if you did right. You’re talking about a country where normal people have normal issues and live normal lives, and at the same time, your country is at war. I felt a sense of guilt. But later on, I understood that maybe this was my mission, to show a different face of Lebanon.”

Her mission was never a simple one. One major obstacle was the fact that, as she says, “there’s no film industry in Lebanon.” Educated at Beirut’s Saint-Joseph University, Labaki cut her teeth as a prominent director of music videos and commercials. “We’re very much a country that is interested in entertainment and songs,” she notes. “People need their entertainment to think about something other than the war.”

Labaki and her co-writers developed the script with the help of French producer Anne-Dominique Toussaint and the Cannes film festival. In choosing and developing the stories that went into the film, Labaki was attracted to those that made her ask questions. “It’s frustrating to know these problems exist yet we accept and live with these problems and no one says anything,” she explains. “They made me feel a sense of rebellion.”

Her ire is evident when she cites the storyline of Rose (Sihame Haddad), a seamstress who’s scared to pursue a late-life romance. “I’ve heard many times a woman say about another woman who might be a little old, ‘It’s ridiculous falling in love at 60! How can she do that? She’s going to be the family’s shame.’ But why do we need to keep her from falling in love only because she’s 60? These are the sort of issues that have driven me.”

Labaki is ecstatic to see that female viewers from all over the world have related to the situations she depicts. Another reason she believes Caramel has connected so widely with audiences is the particular allure of the hair salon, which she regards as a kind of quotidian sanctuary.

“It’s a forbidden place for men so it’s a fascinating place for them,” says Labaki. “They tend to imagine things going on behind these curtains. But for women, it’s a place where they feel comfortable because it’s a place of hope. This is the place they come to become more beautiful and to hide their faults. They’re also among women so they feel comfortable and not judged. And the relationship with the person who is making us more beautiful is so special because she sees us in every detail. She sees us naked and knows us in our truth. So you start confiding in her, telling her your secrets, even unconsciously.”

Essentially light-hearted despite the characters’ many hardships, the film conveys that feeling of easy intimacy. And lest all this imply that the men in Caramel are forever stuck outside this circle — or worse yet, vilified as hairy-chested scapegoats — it’s important to note that Labaki’s movie goes pretty easy on them. “The problem is not men,” she says. “Sometimes women are much harder on other women or on their own selves than men are on us. The problem is society.”