MAD Solutions Boards Ameer Fakher Eldin’s ‘Yunan’, As Georges Khabbaz, Sibel Kekilli Join Cast
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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.
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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 producer Dorothe Beinemeier, CEO of Hamburg-based Red Balloon Film, following their ongoing collaboration on Palestinian filmmaker Muayad Alayan’s upcoming film A House In Jerusalem.
“The feeling of insurmountable strangeness and the longing for a reassuring but difficult-to-reach home are at the core of the cinematic narrative of the young Syrian director,” she explains.
“Ameer’s feature debut The Stranger focused on alienation within one’s own community and family, while the new screenplay Yunan is about the strangeness of an exiled man in Germany. Ameer strikes a deep chord with his timeless, poetic screenwriting and visual language, and is already demonstrating maturity in his way of storytelling,” said Beinemeier.
She and Fakher Eldin will present the project at the upcoming Red Sea Souk Project Market of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea International Film Festival, the second edition runs December 1 to 10.
The Stranger premiered in Venice in 2021, winning the Edipo Re Award. It enjoyed a buzzy career on the international film festival circuit, winning Best Arab Film at Cairo International Film Festival.
“We jumped at the opportunity to work with a hugely talented Arab filmmaker, a mouth-watering cast of Arab and international actors and actresses – some of whom are yet to be revealed – a passionate producer who has love for every project she has worked on, and a beautiful screenplay that takes us on a moving journey that will resonate everywhere,” said MAD Solutions co-founders Alaa Karkouti and Maher Diab.
Founded in 2010, Mad Solutions is one of the world’s leading distributors of Arab-language films and also runs one of the biggest promotional agency and management company for Arab creative talent.
Since the beginning of 2021, it has distributed more than 100 film titles, two-thirds of them feature-length, across the Arab-speaking world and in international markets.
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