En transit

In 2018, Amir Reza Koohestani was on his way to Chile when, during a layover in Munich, he was suddenly transferred by the border police to the airport transit zone, plainly referred to as the “waiting room.” To explain this turn of events, the director was told he had overstayed his Schengen visa. As it turns out, he had actually and inexplicably been delivered two different visas. After an interminable wait, he was sent back to Iran. By a cruel twist of fate, he’d found himself reading Anna Seghers’s Transit in a waiting room full of people experiencing the very Kafkaesque situation the protagonist of this political novel faces: the story of thousands of people trying to flee Nazi Europe and getting lost in the anonymous and disembodied system in charge of issuing visas.

A major figure in contemporary German literature, Anna Seghers (1900-1983) joined the Communist Party before co-founding the Union of Proletarian and Revolutionary Writers in 1929. As an outspoken antifascist author, her books were banned and burned during the Second World War. In 1975, she was awarded the Culture Prize of the World Peace Council.

With Danae Dario, Agathe Lecomte, Khazar Masoumi, Mahin Sadri

Freely adapted from the novel Transit by Anna Seghers
Text Amir Reza Koohestani, Keyvan Sarreshteh
Direction Amir Reza Koohestani
Translation and adaptation Massoumeh Lahidji
Set design, lights Éric Soyer
Video Phillip Hohenwarter
Music Benjamin Vicq (composition)
Costumes Marie Artamonoff
Assistant direction Isabela De Moraes Evangelista
French and in english translation for the surtitles Massoumeh Lahidji

Production Comédie de Genève
Co-production Odéon, Théâtre de l’Europe (Paris), Théâtre national de Bretagne (Rennes), Fondazione Teatro Metastasio di Prato, Mehr Theatre Group, Festival d’Avignon, Maillon Théâtre de Strasbourg - Scène européenne, Triennale Milan Teatro
In partnership with France Médias Monde