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 film has received the support of Bidayyat’s documentary grant 2016.

The random shelling in Syria led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Syrian families inside Syria, but also to neighboring countries. Often, the families had to flee without the fathers, as they disappeared in prisons or died. As a result, many of the displaced children are now forced to work due to the former sole breadwinner.  In Beirut, the Lebanese capital, tens of children daily roam the city's streets as street vendors, selling flowers or chewing gum almost as if they are begging. These children are trying to help their families to survive in one of the most expensive... more

From within the shelters that are home to Syrian children at the Chatila camp in Beirut, Lebanon; the director Lina Al Abed vividly portrays the haunting dreams of these forcefully migrated children, intersecting their deep stories and nightmares into one dream in the movie - The Dream of Strong Monsters - a short film by Bidayyat Productions. Using daring audiovisual language that combines the beauty of the portrayal of the children, with the sensibility of the image, Lina Al Abed seeks an expressionistic pattern that resembles their dreamworlds. "It's an attempt at facing my own nightmares that invokes my continues insomnia",... more