MAD Solutions Boards Ameer Fakher Eldin’s ‘Yunan’, As Georges Khabbaz, Sibel Kekilli Join Cast
15.11.2022 - 19:45
/ deadline.com
EXCLUSIVE: Leading Arab world distributor MAD Solutions has acquired pan-Arab rights to Ameer Fakher Eldin’s upcoming picture Yunan about a disillusioned, exiled writer who travels to a remote island in the North Sea.
Yunan is the second feature from Fakher Eldin, who was born in Kyiv to Syrian parents and now lives in Germany, after his critically acclaimed Golan Heights-set debut The Stranger (Al Garib) which premiered in Venice in 2021, and went on to represent Palestine at the Oscars.
Top Lebanese theater and film actor Georges Khabbaz (Perfect Strangers, Under The Bombs) will play the protagonist writer who travels from his exiled existence in Hamburg to a remote island in the North Sea with thoughts of suicide. There he meets an elderly woman whose quiet humanity incites a reawakening of his desires in life.
German actress Sibel Kekilli, best known for her role as Shae in Game Of Thrones, has also recently joined the cast and with further casting announcements to follow.
Yunan is the second part of a trilogy called Home that began with The Stranger. Fakher Eldin says it expands on the themes of estrangement that he explored in the first film.
“Yunan is a story of salvation and rebirth. It deals with the distances that open up relentlessly as we exile, between the unforgettable past and the present, between the present and an unattainable future,” he said.
“It is about loneliness and depression, and particularly the kind of depression suffered by those who choose feelings they cannot bear and get stuck in the depths of their despair.”
The film is being produced by Red Balloon Film (Germany), Les Films Du Veyrier (France), Intramovies (Italy) and Fresco Films (Palestine).
Yunan reunites MAD Solutions with