FAST FORWARD 2021 / Projection:
14/12/2021 / 20:30 / Montenegrin Cinematheque / Podgorica
Abdallah Al-Khatib / Lebanon, Qatar, France / 2021 / 89′
Director: Abdallah Al-Khatib
Screenplay: Abdallah Al-Khatib
Editor: Qutaiba Barhamji
Sound: Pierre Armand
Production: Bidayyat for Audiovisual Arts, Films de Force Majeure
Producers: Mohammad Ali Atassi, Jean-Laurent Csinidis
Starring: Abdallah Al-Khatib
SYNOPSIS
The district of Yarmouk (Damascus, Syria) sheltered the biggest Palestinian refugee camp in the world from 1957 to 2018. When the Syrian revolution broke out, the regime of Bashar Al-Assad saw Yarmouk as a refuge of rebels and resistance and set up a siege from 2013 on. Gradually deprived of food, medicine and electricity, Yarmouk was cut off from the rest of the world. Abdallah Al-Khatib was born in Yarmouk and lived there until his expulsion by Daesh in 2015. Between 2011 and 2015, he and his friends documented the daily life of the besieged inhabitants, who decided to face bombing, displacement and hunger with rallying, study, music, love and joy. Hundreds of lives were irredeemably transformed by war and siege – from Abdallah’s mother, who turned into a nurse taking care of the elderly at the camp, to the fiercest activists whose passion for Palestine got gradually undermined by hunger.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Abdallah Al-Khatib was born in 1989 in Yarmouk. He studied sociology at the University of Damascus. Before the revolution, he worked for the UN as coordinator of activities and volunteers. He created the humanitarian aid association Wataad, with several friends, which carried out dozens of projects in several regions of Syria, and in particular in Yarmouk. Moreover, he participated in several documentary films relating the life of the Yarmouk camp.The German magazine Peace Green identified him as one of the 2014 “peacemakers”. In Sweden, he received the Per Anger Human Rights Award in 2016. Abdallah currently lives in Germany, where he was recently granted refugee status.
FESTIVALS AND AWARDS
Hamburg Film Festival (Germany) – Audience Award for Best Film
Guanajuato International Film Festival (Mexico) – Best International Documentary Feature
São Paulo International Film Festival (Brazil) – Special Jury Award, New Directors Competition
Visions du Réel Festival International de Cinema Nyon (Switzerland) – Interreligious Award
War on Screen International Film Festival (France) – Press Jury Award
Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (Japan)
Dokufest International Documentary and Short Film Festival (Kosovo)
Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival (France)