Fi Yaom min Ayyam Al Ounf Al Adi, Sadiqui Michel Seurat…

“One ordinarily violent day in 1986, in the profaned city of Beirut, my friend Michel Seurat died in solitude, a victim of his kidnappers’ negligence, while still in their hands.” The first title that Omar Amiralay had given to his project was: “Michel, you robbed me of my death…” On 22nd May 1985, Jean-Paul Kauffmann and Michel Seurat were kidnapped on the road to Beirut airport by the Islamic Jihad. Seurat died after eight months of confinement. The voices of his partner and a friend, a few objects, the clair-obscur. Here, the absent figure, represented by silent looks, is at the centre of the words and a few documents. The figure of a man in love with the Orient, who was stalked by bitterness and disappointment. “For the space of a film, Omar Amiralay has put aside his caustic approach. This time, the wound is not one that heals with impunity. (…) Yet, even without irony, Omar Amiralay continues to disturb. Firstly, because he distorts the categories to which Arte’s European audience is used to. Those who have no idea of the man behind Michel Seurat, the hostage, will be upset by the eulogy that an Arab, and Syrian to boot, makes to his friend. He also disturbs because, when the film was shown in Lebanon, he ruffled the collective amnesia that is used as national identity.” Samir Kassir