Documentary films produced by Bidayyat, as well as those films that have received a Bidayyat grant supporting feature-length documentary filmmaking. These films, and their up-and-coming Syrian directors, represent a cinematic approach centred around experimentation and an alternative visual language that keeps pace with the major changes currently underway in the region, not just to document these events, but to interrogate them, to probe their human details, and to restore their forgotten stories, all as part of a vision that recognizes the distinctive and special status of auteur filmmaking. 

 

Bidayyat has stopped its grants for now.  We will announce here once the Grant is open again.

 

   
FEATURED SHORT FILMS

On the edge of life- trailer from Yaser Kassab

On the edge of life, A film by Yaser Kassab
27/03/2017
A poetic Journey about loss and grief  more
SHARE:
#Grant  #film  #Aleppo  ...
MORE GRANTED FILMS
Obscure, a film by Soudade Kaadan
01/03/2017
  Ahmad is a Syrian child who doesn’t want to remember that he is Syrian. Half traumatized, half trying to escape his reality, he prefers to be silent and asleep. In his silence and refusal to talk, he takes us in a journey where individual and collective Syrian memories collapse.   Director: Soudade Kaadan    This...  more
SHARE:
#Film  # Grant  # Syrian Child  ...
"300 Miles" a film by Orwa Al Mokdad
20/02/2016
  Orwa Al Mokdad starts a journey from Daraa, southern Syria, to Aleppo, northern Syria, to understand the reasons that have shattered the whole Arab region over the country’s history and the distance that has grown for the past five years, since the beginning of the Syrian war. A distance that...  more
SHARE:
#Aleppo  # front-line  # displacement  ...
The Sea Belongs To Mariam” a film by Wael Hamada
22/09/2015
  The film explores the subject of exile and the impact this has on the refugee in terms of the lack of options in his or her host culture, as told through the story of Mariam, a Syrian woman who has taken the decision to move out of central Beirut and...  more
SHARE:
#refugees  #Syrian Women  # Wael Hamada  ...
“Why do we film ourselves now?”, a film by Dana Araby
22/09/2015
  After two years of continuous frustrations, and the changing fortunes of the revolution and war in Kafranbel, civil activists are subjected to a fresh wave of persecution by their former friends. For extremist Islamist forces in the city their principles now provide a new reason to detain, execute, and torture...  more
SHARE:
#Kafranbel  # extremist  # activists  ...
“Skin” a film by Afraa Batous
21/09/2015
  Skin follows the director’s personal journey through vivid memories of two of her closest friends, Hussein and Soubhi, living in politically and socially tiring times. She documents their gradual collapse, which, as she realizes later, reflects her own inner collapse.   This film has received the support of Bidayyat’s documentary grant 2015  more
SHARE:
#Afraa Batous  # Skin  # Grant  ...
“Ibrahim” a film by Lina Alabed
21/09/2015
  Ibrahim is a secret member of the Palestinian Militant Organization “Revolutionary Council” (Abu Nidal), which was known for its notorious intelligence affairs. My Father, Ibrahim, disappeared in 1987,I was 5 years old, he said his mission will taken few days, but never returned home.   Growing up in a house where silence was...  more
SHARE:
#Lina Alabed  # Ibrahim  # Grant  ...
“The Scattered roof of memory”, a film by Mezar Matar
21/09/2015
  Sarjeila, a village in Syria’s Idleb governorate, Sarjeila died when its inhabitants abandoned it 1,300 years ago, leaving to posterity their solid stone dwellings, an olive press, and graves. Then suddenly, life returned with the arrival of new residents who fled war and death, to live like ghosts in houses...  more
SHARE:
#Idleb  #Mezar Matar  # Sarjiela  ...
“Citizen Journalist”, a film by Salah Ashkar
21/09/2015
  The film, tells the story of a Syrian citizen who decides to risk becoming a photographer and cameraman in order to preserve and communicate the voice of the Syrian revolution in Aleppo. Over the course of four years the war turns him into a machine, stripped of his humanity, robotically...  more
SHARE:
#Aleppo  # Citizen Journalist  # Grant  ...
“Umbilical Cord”, a film by Doha Hassan
21/09/2015
  A year ago my head began to reject my hair, like those places in which I’ve lived, the countries that rejected me. Land after land, one place after another: Palestine, Syria, and now, Lebanon—those countries that have failed and have burdened me with their failure.   The Gulf War, the family’s constant...  more
SHARE:
#Memory  # Exile  # Palestine  ...
" Chaos", a film by Sara Fattahi
21/09/2015
  Two women have given up on life; their words have stopped in their tracks. One exiles herself to silence; the other attempts to disappear in the company of four female poets who, before her, have attempted themselves to disappear in one way or another. A dialogue between one woman stuck...  more
SHARE:
#Damascus  # Syrian Women  # Sara Fattahi  ...
“During Your Death” a film by Rafia Salama
20/02/2015
Death has come to dominate the lives of Syrians. They have grown used to it; it’s the thing they are most familiar with. But what happens when one of them cannot get used to it? Rafia is a young woman from Damascus who is terrified of the ever-increasing incidence of death...  more
SHARE:
#Death  # Syria  # Family  ...
“Home Road” a film by Wael Adlo
20/02/2015
In early 2013, I was filing a report on the southern ring-road in Damascus, part of which had become the front-line between regime forces (on the city side) and the Free Syrian Army occupying the surrounding area. My work on the report got side-tracked by research into the history of...  more
SHARE:
#Damascus  # front lines  # southern ring-road  
“Threads” a film by Rima Al Hamed
20/02/2015
All I know about my grandmother Evdokia is that more than a century ago she made her way barefoot from Turkey to Syria, fleeing the massacres against the Armenians; that she hid her identity and ethnicity, changed religions and gave brought forth my family. Perhaps it was my sense that our...  more
SHARE:
#Syria  # Armenians  # Massacre  ...
”Suzi …Where does all This Violence Come From?” a film by Reem Ali
20/02/2015
The Syrian revolution prompted me to rummage through the tales concealed in my family home in the village of Quatna  (30 km south of Damascus), stories I had never once discussed with my family. The house, which my father—an opponent of the Syrian regime during the presidencies of Assad senior and...  more
SHARE:
#Syria  # Revolution  # Family  ...
“No Jihad in Here” a film by Amro Kheito
20/02/2015
In my city, Al Zabadani, you learn that death is not man’s worst nightmare, even though facing it and fleeing it are the only things left to do. After spending a few days in this city of mine you realize that your very worst nightmare is to lose everything you...  more
SHARE:
#Zabadani  # Revolution  # Death  ...
“Coma” a film by Sara Fattahi
15/01/2015
  The film shows the micro cosmos of three generations of women from one family. In detailed observation their movements between the present and an ever existing past is followed as their lives intersect while living together in one house. Coexisting, but separated by the age and time that each carry...  more
SHARE:
#The Sesterce d’argent prize  # Regard Neuf   #Vision du Réel-Coma  ...
Marwan - a film by Alaa Chanana
05/09/2013
Marwan worked at the buffet of the Spanish Cultural Center in Damascus “Cervantes” in the hope of realizing his dream of traveling to Spain and escaping from his home country. But after the formal decision of the Spanish government to shut down the Cervantes, Marwan finds himself without work, and...  more
SHARE:
#Syria  # Escape  # dreams  ...
Operations - a film by a young Syrian filmmaker
04/09/2013
The revolution is still ongoing, but in a different way. The daily incidents and reports have created a distance from what is supposed to be of our own making. The revolution of holding flowers, olive branches and banners is over, and on a new morning, the same young people went...  more
SHARE:
#Syria  # Death  # Revolution  ...
Playing with death - a film by Hussein Alghajer
04/09/2013
Ahmad is a child. He was born in 1998 in one of the poorest suburbs of Damascus  “Hajr Al Aswad”. With the revolution, Ahmed left Damascus with one of his brothers for the northern city of Idlib, but was critically injured by the regular army during an anti-regime protest. In...  more
SHARE:
#Death  # Syria  # fear  ...
Al Qadisia - A film by a young Syrian filmmaker
31/08/2013
Initially, the director intended to record all the details of the battle with her camera , from the very beginning until the very end of the fighting. But as time goes by and the young filmmaker shares the everyday life and risks side by side with the fighters, she finds...  more
SHARE:
#Battle  # Syria  # Filming  ...