| 53% performative installation 20% absence 27% sad truth
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A young Lebanese man takes his own life and, in a farewell letter, declares that his reasons are personal and have nothing to do with politics. But his suicide mobilises a society desperately in search of meaning: institutions (official and unofficial, religious and secular, left-wing and right-wing) and individuals (young and old) find their own reasons. Does the young man’s death belong to the public or only to him and his relatives? Was he driven by the hope of an uprising?
In their semi-documentary work, Rabih Mroué and Lina Saneh astutely reconstruct the final moments of a person’s life, at the same time passionately unmasking the problems of a country in which last year’s Arab revolutions have failed to strike a spark. Can an act of desperation, be it politically motivated or not, revive the hope for change in such a divided nation? The young man is dead but everything lives on, vibrating and communicating in his bedroom: the television, the answering machine, the computer … Time pauses and begins anew, history is pieced together – never constructed, of course – from so many fragments of communication.
Text and direction Rabih Mroué & Lina Saneh
Set design, graphic and animation Samar Maakaroun
Director of photography Sarmad Louis
Assistant technical production Sarmad Louis & Thomas Köppel
Translation Ziad Nawfal
Casting and production Petra Serhal
Editing Najib Zeitouni & Sarmad Louis
With Nagham Abboud, Samir Abou Jaoudé, Thomas Bowles, Edy Gemaa, Raseel Hadjian, Colette Hajj, Wadad Hneine, Paul Khodr, Ibtisam Kishly, Eliane Mallat, Muriel Moukawem, Elie Njeim, Antoine Ozon & Najeeb Zeytouni
Voices Abdallah Al Machnouk, Gheith El Amine, Raphael Fleuriet, Charbel Haber, May Kassem, Nesrine Khodr, Victoria Lupton, Diran Mardirian, Rabih Mroué, Ziad Nawfal & Lina Saneh
Chant
Fatima Bazzi
Music "Ya Jaret El Wadi" by Mohammed Abdel Wahab &
"Le Dernier Repas" by Jacques Brel
Production direction Dominik Jutz
Production Roland Gfrerer
Technical direction Karl Masten, Hermann Schapek
Technical direction Grazer Spielstätten Michael Doubek
Technic Grazer Spielstätten Martin Schachner