Soueid’s magnus opus, a gargantuan flux that is both timeless and multi-temporal, THE
INSOMNIA OF A SERIAL DREAMER amalgamates the past into the present (“a present in the
past tense”), and from the schizophrenic streets of Beirut opens onto the world: the world that a
Middle East Airlines captain has traveled and now remembers from his patio (“the most
unbearable passengers were those on the Beirut-Paris flight”), but also the world of boundless
love one of Soueid’s friends has for the Egyptian singer and actress Souad Hosny. In order to fall
asleep, the director asked his friends and artistic accomplices to tell him stories, resulting in a
film of rarefied, oneiric beauty.
