- The film by young Ukrainian filmmaker Ameer Fahker Eldin is competing for the Golden Lady Harimaguada in the Official Section after participating at the Berlinale
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Thursday, May 1, 2025.- Exile, loneliness and the fragility of human relationships get into the 24th LPAIFF with Yunan, by Ameer Fakher Eldin (Germany, Canada, Italy, Palestine, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, 2025, 124 min.). After its selection at the 75th Berlinale, this drama about a hopeless man’s vulnerability premiering in Spain as part of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival will compete now for this edition’s Golden Lady Harimaguada.
Haunted by vivid dreams and inner demons, Munir, an exiled writer who’s lost inspiration, decides to travel to a remote German island where he plans to commit suicide. There he meets a devoted elderly woman and her son, whose quiet humanity incites a reawakening of his desires and instincts for life.
Yunan is the second part of a trilogy the director has called Homeland, which explores the themes of identity and alienation. During a press conference, the filmmaker explained that, throughout the trilogy, “I try to explore the theme of home, whether it is in the past or in the present or in the future.” In the first installment, his debut film The Stranger, “I was dealing with the idea of when you feel a stranger amongst your own people,” while this second film, Yunan, “was about a stranger who is actually amongst other strangers.” He is already working in the third one, which will be focused on freedom, borders and a constant search for a home.
Yunan, pointed out the director, deals mostly “with the theme of estrangement, of displacement as well, but if you look at the lives of exiled people,” he noted, there are three losses in this process. The first one, he claimed, “starts when you are forced to leave your home because of wars or national crisis.” Then, he continued, “you arrive to a safe-refuge country and you try to exist, be part of the fabric of this place, so even if you manage to integrate well, you will be always missing something, you will be dealing with this constant feeling of loss.” And the third moment, “a catharsis, perhaps,” happens if the homeland becomes safe again and you can go back. “Even then,” he stressed, “you would find yourself estranged among your own people.” In short, this “makes the journey of displaced people very tragic,” because “we keep considering them as threats to society, to the country they live in, instead of giving them a warm embrace.” That’s why, in Yunan, Ameer Fakher Eldin wanted to capture imagination “not only as a dream but as the only way out for such people.”
Dorothe Beinemeier, who already produced his first film, has done the same for this second installment. She said at the press conference that, thanks to the “big success” achieved by their first feature, which was, in fact, selected at the Oscars as the Palestinian entry for the Best International Feature Film, they were able to get international exposure and seek out funding from up to seven countries.
In 2021, the director began to film this co-production dealing with the themes of exile, loneliness and the fragility of human relationships, though approached from a compassionate perspective on migration and displacement. His film’s two-hour running time successfully captures visually striking images that convey the main character’s melancholic mood and confirm Eldin’s talent for creating cinematographic atmospheres.
The film was shot in a “magical” setting that was carefully chosen to convey, in a metaphoric way, a feeling of isolation and inner reflection on the remote Hallig Islands in Germany, where a lot of people, the filmmaker added jokingly, “are not even familiar with the place.” This melancholic fable, he said, “represents its main character’s fear of being forgotten by her mother” by making him go through a defeated state of mind. So the big question this film poses to its audience is, “who are we if our mothers forget about us?”
Born in Ukraine from Palestine and Syrian parents, 33-years-old Ameer Fahker Eldin identifies with his Hamburg-based solitary protagonist’s feeling of displacement, played by Lebanese actor Georges Khabbaz, who is known for his leading role in the 2007 Lebanese drama Under the Bombs. The cast also includes iconic German actress Hanna Schygulla, who’s previously won the Best Actress Award at Cannes and the Berlinale, Game of Thrones stars Sibel Kekilli and Tom Wlaschiha, as well as Ali Suliman, best known for his role in Paradise Now, the first Palestine film that has been nominated to the Oscars for Best Foreign Film.
Partners, sponsors and collaborators of the 24 FICLPGC
The Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival, organized by the Culture area of the Gran-Canarian capital’s City Council through Promoción de la Ciudad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, has received public assistance by the ICAA [Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts], the Visitors’ Program for the Internationalization of Spanish Culture (PICE), of the Spanish Public Agency for Cultural Action (AC/E), as well as public support from Promotur Turismo Islas Canarias.
Among the Festival’s collaborators we may find Fundación Auditorio Teatro, Cines Yelmo, Las Arenas Shopping Center and Hotel Cristina by Tigotan, places which also function as venues or hold activities of the film event; as well as other institutions and companies such as Sagulpa, Toyota, Royal Bliss, Fuze Tea, Coca Cola, Sholeo Lodge, Audiovisuales Canarias, Music Library &SFX, Blackout Films and International Bach Festival. Likewise, its market, MECAS, has been possible thanks to the sponsorship of the Gran Canaria Film Commission-Sociedad de Promoción Económica de Gran Canaria and the support of Proexca.
The University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the Mid Atlantic University, Digital 104, the Audiovisual Cluster of the Canary Islands, the Association of Women Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media CIMA, the Cartagena International Film Festival, the Gijón International Film Festival, the Barcelona Independent Film Festival, the Tres Puertos Laboratory, Barcelona’s ESCAC, and Very Good Script, Freak World and Fimucité are also collaborators.
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