Bidayyat for Audiovisual Arts

"With the barrel bombs falling on Ghouta, civilians sought shelter in the basements of their homes. I was one of them, holding on to my camera, I tried to film what I couldn’t express in words."

During the Syrian civil war, the district of Yarmouk, home to thousands of Palestinians, became the scene of dramatic and ferocious fighting. The film follows the destiny of civilians during the brutal sieges, imposed by the Syrian regime, that took place in the wake of the battles. With his camera, Abdallah Al-Khatib composes a love song to a place that proudly resists the atrocities of war.

The film portrays the changes in the life of an Armenian family on Aleppo’s frontline in Al Midan, an area that brought shelter to the persecuted Armenians 100 years ago and today to many displaced Syrians. From the balcony of his home, the director films with a small camera the changes in his neighborhood and his own family, interweaving his images with extracts from classical films to illustrate the parallels between the Armenian genocide and Syrians’ reality today.