Soudade Kaadan

Even as bombs fall on Damascus, Mutaz refuses to flee to the uncertain life of a refugee. His wife, Hala, and daughter, Zeina, must make the choice whether to stay or leave.

It is winter in Damascus. Sana, with her eight-year-old son, is living alone while her husband works in Saudi Arabia. When Sana runs out of gas to cook or warm the house, she takes a day off to find a gas cylinder. From there begins a trip into the surroundings of Damas, where Sana finds herself brutally confronted with the effects of war.

In battle-ridden Syria, a woman trying to smuggle bread into a blockaded area crosses paths with a soldier on the run.

Ayman, Syrian refugee in Lebanon, teaching his wife how to drive his car, the only thing left for him from his country. The lesson takes a wrong turn into madness and nostalgia.

Syrian traditional story-telling, folklore, tales, fictional mythological characters play an important role in their culture. This tradition is passed generation to the next generation — from grandparents to grandchildren. However, in the modern era these stories are being lost. This is happening in Damascus, the capital and the second largest city of Syria, too.

Six-year-old Ahmad doesn’t want to remember that he is Syrian. He recently lost his older brother to the war in Syria, and now lives with his family in a Lebanese refugee camp. Traumatised, overwhelmed, disengaged, he prefers to be silent. Director Soudade Kaadan’s patient observation accompanies Ahmad, as he recovers a sense of childhood lightness despite his grief. Amid endless images of violence, the film poses a question about the future, and in Kaadan’s words, “explores the impossibility to verbally express what is happening in Syria now.”

An experimental theatre project is touring Syria. Through interactive plays, they investigate violence in its different forms and question traditional social rules.

A smuggled camera slips into the heart of Hama. Amid hidden faces and disguised voices, one woman stands unmasked: Fidaa Al Hourani: doctor and activist. In the first broadcast film about the Syrian revolution, she risks her life to speak.