Hostage, the bachar

All that we know of the testimony of hostages in Lebanon are the accounts of certain Westerners who lived through these unusual conditions of detention. By comparing their stories, we are able to perceive an often significant difference in the way that each one of them experienced the situation. This video essay gives us the version of Souheil Bachar, the only Arab hostage who, for a period of three weeks, shared the cell of five American hostages: Terry Anderson, Thomas Sutherland, Benjamin Weir, Martin Jenco and David Jacobsen. This film, a refl ection on the status of testimony, on its power of fiction, makes no attempt to establish the truth about what happened but allows us to ascer- tain that an experience can only be recognized and passed on through the elaboration of a form whose distance with the actual facts is a necessary precondition.