Feature Documentary Film
TOTAL BUDGET
US $208,457
CONFIRMED FINANCING
US $35,000
CONTACTS
zeinasfeir@gmail.com
+961 3971579
rshamdan@cyberia.net.lb
+961 71148886
gregor@inselfilm.info
+49 30 77008849
This is a film about an unsolved massacre in my family that took place when I was not even two years old.
It’s a film about growing up with war, growing up with fear, growing up with death.
On March 15, 1976, four men in their forties were brutally murdered. Their dead bodies were thrown in an abandoned land. Their town was struck by fear and terror. Complete silence took over. The villagers withdrew in their homes, wept there alone and kept their distance from everything that surrounded them.
The silence was heavy, terrifying, interrupted only by the sound of women wailing, a sound that echoed all over the town.
The train arrived to the train station where two of the victims worked. It whistled, then the sound started to fade away. It was the last train to ever arrive at Rayak train station. The two victims left the station upon the request of one of them; George Chebabi, clockmaker of the station and mayor of Rayak. He was very concerned about the situation. It was almost a premonition.
At that time, a new bloody chapter was about to be written in the history of the Lebanese Civil War that started in 1975.
I grew up in a Christian region of Lebanon. The people in my surroundings had right-wing political opinions, but I didn’t adhere to these opinions completely. Although I didn’t follow a clear political path, my artistic choices since a very young age were more inclined to the left-wing way of thinking.
When I started my career as a filmmaker, I started searching for answers to the different questions I was asking myself. At that time, I understood that I was more inclined to the left-wing political beliefs, and that I don’t really resemble my original background in my political convictions. This is from where I want to rediscover the details of a murder that shook my extended family and haunted our memory: four of my relatives were killed in my mother’s hometown Rayak located in the Bekaa valley, next to the Syrian border.
The Lebanese cinema has already dealt with many killing stories and murders perpetrated by right-wing fighters during the Lebanese war. In this film I will try to present a bloody event that occurred during the civil war, whose victims were civilians who had right-wing opinions and never held a gun in their lives. One of these victims was the mayor of the town and a clockmaker, he was my aunt’s husband, and after his murder, the whole family became a victim of the war – a family that holds on to a story and presents it as an absolute truth.
Making a film is always a journey, but making this film will be a very special journey for us. Waiting for the Train is a film with many layers – that's what immediately attracted us to the project. It deals with the very personal story of the director's family through which the geopolitical situation in Lebanon and the entire region is reflected. It's a shattering account of how war and violence shaped the lives of the director's family, just like so many other lives in the region; an account of the tragedy of personal loss and the universal senselessness of violence. It has historical elements to it, looking back at Lebanon's bloody history while at the same time being very up to date, pointing a finger at all the violence currently going on in the region. To convey all these different meanings, to capture all of these layers, Zeina has found a beautiful (visual) metaphor: the train network, or rather, the absence of it. In our opinion, this metaphor, which also has a strong connection to Zeina's family history, will enable her to not only tell the story, but to do it in a very poetic and sensual way, and to be ruthless and poetical at the same time. We believe that it's exactly this mix that will make this film so special, this use of a metaphor that will enable the film to reach a wide audience, both in the Arab world and beyond.
2012: Hungarian Moustache
2013: Beyond the Wave
2013: Surviving the Tsunami - My Atomic Aunt
2014: The Serbian Lawyer
2016: The Dazzling Light of Sunset