As freewheeling as a travelogue, Lana Daher’s mercurial documentary eschews talking heads and voiceover, drawing instead from more than 20,000 hours of archival footage to channel the resilient spirit of Beirut. Reflecting the non-linear movement of history, the film abandons chronology, zigzagging between disparate events, film clips and newsreels, TV programmes and home videos. Rich with a sense of play as well as melancholy, this stylistic approach conjures the precarity of life in the Lebanese capital. Moments of everyday joy – a wedding celebration, a family outing – are interspersed with startling images of hollowed-out buildings and bombed cars. Here, war seems never-ending and peace is fragile.

The film resurrects painful sociopolitical chapters, including the brutal 15-year Lebanese civil war and Israel’s repeated invasions of the country, yet also makes room for gentle humour and beauty. There’s also a deliberate emphasis on popular culture, with the inclusion of hit pop songs; one particularly exhilarating section is set to Dalida’s classic disco track Laissez-Moi Danser, played over dancing scenes both fictional and real. The sequence is immediately followed by a shot of a garbage dump, a stark reminder of reality; off kilter as it is, this tongue-in-cheek edit feels like an ode to the collective courage of Lebanese people. Amid the wartime upheavals, the music goes on.

Though composed of a huge volume of material, Daher’s documentary does not overwhelm, maintaining instead a remarkable rhythm that fluidly moves between calm, exuberance and disorder. Having previously worked on Kaouther Ben Hania’s documentaries, editor and co-writer Qutaiba Barhamji achieves this difficult balance with great virtuosity. Initially spurred by the erasure of Lebanon’s contemporary history in the country’s education system, Daher’s film shows an alternative way of narrativising the past – one that moves away from the rigid confines of institutional models.

• Do You Love Me is at the ICA, London from 5-19 February