Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege
Spring Grants 2019
Abdallah Al-Khatib / Feature Documentary / Lebanon, France, Qatar / 2021 / 89 min / Colour / Original Language: Arabic / Interests: Social Issues, War, Youth, Immigration, Identity, Creative Documentary, Women Issues
Synopsis
The district of Yarmouk in Damascus, Syria, sheltered the largest Palestinian refugee camp in the world from 1957 to 2018. When the Syrian revolution broke out, Bashar Al-Assad’s regime saw Yarmouk as a refuge of rebels and resistance, besieging the camp from 2013 onwards. Gradually deprived of food, medicine and electricity, Yarmouk was cut off from the rest of the world. Filmmaker Abdallah Al-Khatib was born in Yarmouk, living there until his expulsion by Daesh in 2015. Between 2011 and 2015, he documented the besieged inhabitants’ daily lives, who chose to face bombing, displacement and hunger with rallying, study, music, love and joy.
Countless lives were irremediably transformed by the war and siege—from Abdallah’s mother, who became a nurse taking care of the elders of the camp, to the fiercest activists whose passion for Palestine became gradually undermined by hunger. Al-Khatib accompanies each increasingly heartbreaking scene with his odic and often incisive view of the situation. Indeed, ‘Little Palestine’ can be difficult watch to watch at times because of the deeply affecting subject matter—but a rewarding and poignant experience, one that speaks truth to power and is a testament to the resilience of the beleaguered people of Yarmouk.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker.
Credits
- Director
- Abdallah Al Khateeb
- Screenwriter
- Abdallah Al-Khatib
- Producer
- Mohammad Ali Atassi, Jean-Laurent Csinidis
About the Director
Abdullah Jamal Al-Khatib is a writer, filmmaker, and human rights defender. He was born in 1989 in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus and studied sociology at the University of Damascus. He has been living in Germany since 2019. In 2021, he completed his first feature documentary, ‘Little Palestine’, which won several awards at international festivals. In 2023, he made his first experience in directing narrative films through the short film ‘Sokrainia 59’. He is currently in the final stages of completing his first feature film, ‘Chronicles of the Time of Siege’. He was selected for the Talent Programme and the ‘Doc Station’ section of the 75th Berlinale Film Festival with his second feature documentary, but withdrew in protest against the festival’s position on Palestine.
Awards and Festival History
Festivals
WP ACID, Cannes 2021
Contacts
-
Main Contact
Mohammad Ali Atassi
- Company:
- Bidayyat for Audiovisual Arts
- Phone:
- 009611751520
- Email:
- aliatassi@yahoo.fr