A Play Entitled Sehnsucht

A Play Entitled Sehnsucht ( film 2011), is a 2011 Lebanese film by the Lebanese writer-director Badran Roy Badran and the Lebanese creative producer Celine Abiad.
A Play Entitled Sehnsucht is a 2011 Lebanese surrealist film produced by Celine Abiad's Beiroots Productions.
A feature film written and directed by Badran Roy Badran, over a period of 5 years, to reflect the incurable self destructive nostalgic desire that Lebanon suffers from. After studying closely the astronomer Bernard Zeidan(1945-2008) who, traumatized by the Lebanese civil war(1975-1989), was locked inside a mental hospital in Lebanon, Badran and his producer Celine Abiad, ended up with a mesmeric multilingual 35mm(Lebanese,German,English) that is also known as the first experimental feature film in the Mediterranean Cinema.
Plot
A Play Entitled Sehnsucht reveals the thirst of Bernard Zeidan the talented Lebanese astronomer who claimed that he had witnessed a planet’s explosion in the year 1975 (beginning of the Lebanese civil war). He dedicated his youth to write about that explosion in details, and after fourteen years of hard work, he published his book in the year 1989 (ending of the Lebanese civil war).
Bernard entitled his book with a German word that describes a universal obsessive feeling that can’t be translated in any other language. The title of his book is: Sehnsucht (a self destructive force caused by an intense desire for a certain ideal moment, felt in the past, a certain ideal moment that will never exist again).
Bernard’s book, Sehnsucht, faced a brutal failure because a planet cannot explode! Bernard found himself stuck in his obsession, which led him to insanity.
Doctor Ulrich, a young German hypnotist, who happened to fall on Bernard’s book, is curious to know why a Lebanese astronomer would use such a controversial German word Sehnsucht as a title for his book.
Doctor Ulrich sets forth to the asylum in Lebanon on may 19, 1998 (post Lebanese civil war period) to analyse the 80 year old mad astronomer Bernard Zeidan through hypnotherapy.
The film happens in a real world reproduced inside an unreal one: the subconscious, the hypnotic play, or the stage where the tale of Bernard is narrated by Ulrich, the German hypnotist, and is performed by four characters symbolising Bernard’s psyche itself: The introvert, the clown, the philosopher, and the intellectual.
A Play Entitled Sehnsucht isn’t only a theater hypnotherapeutic technique used by doctor Ulrich who was interested to explore Bernard’s subconscious and solve the Sehnsucht mystery, but it’s more of an experience reflecting a deep intimacy that arises in every one of us when confronting Destiny...when confronting that lost forever feeling of desiring passionately and impatiently, accompanied by the melancholic pain of that crucial moment decision each one of us took in the past.
Cast
-Christian Ghazy: as Bernard Zeidan the mental astronomer who wrote a book during the Lebanese civil war, analysing and rationalizing a 20 seconds vision he had about a planet's explosion. The title of his book is the untranslatable German word: Sehnsucht. After the brutal failure of his book, Bernard was locked in a Lebanese asylum until his death.
-Gianni Fau: as Doctor Ulrich the German hypnotist who found a book entitled Sehnsucht written by a Lebanese astronomer! He decides to come to Lebanon and meet the writer of the book, the astronomer Bernard Zeidan who is locked in a Lebanese asylum.
Ulrich will try to cure Bernard using the "Theater Hypnotherapeutic Technique". Through hypnosis, Dr. Ulrich will become the narrator of a play performed inside the subconscious of Bernard Zeidan.
-Bernard's Psyche-
-Vartan Meguerditchian: The Philosopher character who asks all the questions that can't be answered.
-Adoni Maalouf: The Clown character.
-Cyril Bassil: The Introvert character.
-Ghady Yaghi: The intellectual character.
Production history
Bernard Zeidan (1945-2008),is a Lebanese astronomer who wrote a book entitled: Sehnsucht published in a limited edition in April,1994, in Beirut. Bernard claimed to have witnessed a planet's explosion in 1975 in Lebanon, and he dedicated all his life to write, analyse, and rationalize his vision. After the publication of his book, Bernard was locked in a mental assylum in Lebanon, and his book was classified as: illogical and irrelevant, since a planet cannot explode by itself.
Bernard would have died unknown in the Lebanese mental hospital if he hadn't met, in March 2006, Badran Roy Badran a 22 year old writer director and Celine Abiad a 20 year old producer, who were studying the post effect of the Lebanese civil war(1975-1989) and its different types of traumas. Badran Roy Badran met Bernard and studied him closely with the help of his doctors...shortly, after Bernard's death, Celine Abiad and Badran decided to dedicate their first feature film: A Play Entitled Sehnsucht, a five year journey to Bernard Zeidan the Lebanese astronomer who wrote a book entitled: Sehnsucht.
-Music producer/Arranger: Sami Gabriel
-Sound: Rasmus Winther Jensen
-Editor: Zeina Nehme
-Cinematographer: Ziad Chahoud
-Visual Effects: Sebastien Leclercq
-Colorist: Charbel Mouawad
-Bashar Abu Saifan: Collaborator Producer
In participation with The Gate (Lebanon) http://www.the-gate.tv/
International Media Support (Denmark) http://www.i-m-s.dk/
Under the high patronage of the Lebanese Ministry of Culture http://www.culture.gov.lb/

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