Cast
An animated documentary film, based on an actual story of a woman from Damascus countryside. Suleima evokes some of childhood memories, when her thoughts refusing injustice had arisen. The film is a portrait of Suleima, and a monitoring of intellectual and social shifts she experiences during the events. The visual environment: has been presented graphically fully of sharp contrasts, and imaginary mixed with reality.
The documentary The Silent Revolution explains the revolution involving nearly 3 million kurds living in Syria. With the outbreak of the civil war —in the frame of the called ‘Arab Spring'— the Kurds of Syria have taken advantage of the context to fight for their political and cultural recognition and thus end the repression that started more than 50 years ago.
When artist Janet Biehl fell in love with radical American philosopher Murray Bookchin in the 1980s whilst editing his ground-breaking opus “The Ecology of Freedom”, she could never have imagined that it would one day take her halfway across the globe. Now, over 40 years later, Janet travels from America to the Middle East to witness something remarkable - how Murray’s ideas have ignited a female-led revolution in North-East Syria, where society is being rebuilt in the wake of victory over ISIS. Janet meets the women who are turning her late partner’s political theories into a modern reality, creating a grassroots communal democracy. Janet draws what she sees, and her illustrations capture the humanity of ordinary people in their struggle to self-govern. Now, at this critical moment for Syria and with this revolutionary project under renewed threat, "Threads of a Revolution" reveals a possible way forward for those prepared to fight for a new way to live.
In Zaatari, Jordan – one of the world’s biggest refugee camps – Maamun owns a little shop: a small white container aligned in a seemingly endless row of identical containers. There he repairs mobile phones of the numerous Syrian refugees. They are anxious to retrieve the devices’ content which consists of memories from the past, a time when the war had yet to begin and they were not yet refugees but just ordinary people. Maamun and his friend Karim invent a new way to satisfy their customers: they buy a printer to print the photos, allowing the camp dwellers to retrieve some of their identity. The film provides an insight into the daily goings-on in a refugee camp.
In her documentary, the Scottish-Syrian director tries to reconcile the two worlds in her head: her fond memories of visiting relatives in Damascus and what has happened in Syria since then. She confronts her cousin, who fled from there, with her recordings from then - and thus calls back memories that were buried under trauma.
