There has been much discussion in certain cultural milieus in Beirut about All this Victory (Ar: Jidār al-Sawt, trans: The Sound Barrier). Since I’m one of the few people who’ve seen the film and am in constant conversation with the director, Ahmad Ghossein, and despite preferring absolute silence so that any articles or debates come after having watched the film; but out of respect for writers who we like, and because we value the right to disagree, we had the following conversation.   Rasha Salti: First, there have been articles and views circulating about scenes in your film that were shot in... more

Saeed is a young cinema passionate trying to teach the youth in Eastern Ghouta in Syria the rules of filming, but the reality they face is much harsher to respect any rule. His friend Milad is on the other side of the fence, in Damascus, under the control of the regime finishing his studies in Fine Arts. At one point, Milad decides to leave the capital and joins Saeed in under sieged Douma where they set up a local radio station and a recording studio. They hold the camera to film everything until one day the camera films them…

Why I no longer feel the lightness? How I discovered that I miss this feeling? Is it because I feel the heaviness all the time? What is the meaning of other’s existence in our life? Is this existence giving us the feeling of Lightness or the feeling of heaviness? A man and a woman meet in a place out of the place and time out of the time, she asks questions and he answers. Have she asked him these questions? Have he answered her? Have they really met? Here where I began but reached nowhere, I was looking for missing... more

  About the film:   Yaser and his partner Rima leave Syria to Lebanon, but after receiving the news that his younger brother passed away in Aleppo, they end up in a remote and an empty place in Turkey. In this place where the silence and the monotonous daily life being broken by the loud noise of the family calls whom still living in Aleppo. To spend a year and a half, which was almost like a slumber and a coma, waking up every day on the recurring nightmares echo.   This film has received the support of Bidayyat's documentary grant 2013  

  About the film:   “194. Us Children of the camp” follows the story of Yarmouk Palestinian camp in Syria as of 2011, through the eyes and experiences of a group of young residents of the camp. The film follows the director’s journey as he is forced to join the Palestinian Liberation Army in Syria only a month before the start of the Syrian uprising. With the escalation of violence and the increasing attacks by the Syrian regime army on the camp, the director and his friends attempt to document the hopes, struggles, departures and loss they experience.    Director: Samer Salameh Producer: Bidayyat Year of production:... more

  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.

  Garage Izmir is in the middle of the long migratory journey that thousands of Syrian refugees pass through daily to take the sea route to Europe, after a long wait in Turkey. Will this journey be delayed one more day?   Director: Ayman Nahle Duration: 20:00 Year of production: 2015 Produced by: Bidayyat  

  In an increasingly appalling atmosphere of political stagnation, failed negotiations, and yet another ceasefire that won’t last, there is at least some good news coming out from Syria these days. A new wave of talented filmmakers is silently but powerfully emerging in the midst of a social media-driven compulsion to upload images nonstop and share them in real time.   In the immediate aftermath of the March 2011 uprising, Syrian activists and ordinary citizens have widely employed filmmaking to bear witness and denounce human rights abuses, in the hope that the sheer amount of visual media will provoke outrage and push the... more

    ‘Yaman’ c’est le nouveau court-métrage saisissant des artistes syriens du collectif Maajooneh qui a pu être réalisé grâce notamment au soutien de l’ONG Bidayyat. Ce film est donc l’œuvre d’artistes exilés depuis quelques années, au Liban et en Turquie, qui racontent par leur art l’anéantissement progressif de toute forme d’innocence dans leur pays et pour le peuple syrien.   Après avoir réalisé un court-métrage intitulé ‘Fade To Black’, qui évoquait la transformation de la situation de la ville de Raqqa devenue capitale de la barbarie et de l’inhumanité, le film, sans paroles, montrait simplement l’évolution émotionnelle et vestimentaire d’une jeune femme, prise... more

  THE caption included in the closing credits brings you up short and reminds you just how perilous life is in Syria. During the four months it took to make the short film, ‘Siege’, one film-maker lost his father to a sniper from the Assad regime. Another was almost kidnapped, and a third was killed during an ISIS attack on the Palestinian Yarmouk Camp in Damascus. The casualties did not end there. The co-ordinator of the Watad Center, the main partner in the making of the short film, was assassinated in his home.   “This is just a small glimpse of the siege on Southern... more

  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 has split the region and its inhabitants into North and South. This film has received the support of Bidayyat’s documentary grant 2014

  More than two years have passed and the Syrian regime still besieges the Southern suburbs of Damascus where a population of more than 100,000 people live until today. During those two years, more than 200 died of hunger and the lack of medical care. The remaining still live under the siege, surviving only by what grows from the earth such as grass and other green leafs and vegetables. They fight the siege and hunger through hope and love they have learned to find during the hardest of time.      Director: Mattar Ismaeel Duration: 15:35 Produced by: Bidayyat  Year of production: 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 onto the narrow sidewalk along the city’s Corniche. She makes her home there and takes the open sea as her lover and source of income, so she starts fishing and she finds in the sea, her salvation and inner peace.   The film also addresses the subject of migration by sea, the... more

  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 them. Hassan, Ayman and Raed are activists from Kafranbel, the revolutionary Syrian town. “Why do we film ourselves now” is a documentary film that interweaves their media and journalistic projects and our outside view of the town’s current reality.       This film has received the support of Bidayyat’s documentary grant 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

  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 the general atmosphere, my mother Najat, an Egyptian lady, had to continue her life normally and raise the five kids of Ibrahim in Damascus, only blaming her misfortune.   My film deals with the story behind the disappearance of my father Ibrahim Alabed, a door that was never opened in our family,... more

  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 abandoned centuries before.   The film follows the lives of three families who came to the village to build new homes there, and records their relationship with the place and how the place itself is changing. It is a journal of people forced a thousand years back into the past, their lives destroyed... more

  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 churning out images of blood and tragedy, only for a traumatic experience to restore him to his senses. He films a group of twenty-two children during an exhibition of their paintings. Twenty-four hours later, their exhibition is bombed from the air and he returns to film their lifeless corpses.       This... more

  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 sundering. Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Berlin: parts of myself scattered across all these places. My memory, riddled with holes. My present and my death.   In Umbilical Cord I assemble an archive of my family in Kuwait: my dead memory of family. I embark on a quest for the unknown part of... more

  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 in Damascus and another who had recently left the city. A dialogue between two worlds, internal and external—an impossible one.   This film has received the support of Bidayyat’s documentary grant 2015    

The film portrays the changes in the life of an Armenian family on Aleppo’s frontline in Al Midan, an area that brought shelter to the persecuted Armenians 100 years ago and today to many displaced Syrians. From the balcony of his home, the director films with a small camera the changes in his neighborhood and his own family, interweaving his images with extracts from classical films to illustrate the parallels between the Armenian genocide and Syrians’ reality today.     Produced by Bidayyat 2015

  The sky fell. The rusty fragments of metal rent air thick with the reek of bodies burnt by artillery fire and napalm. The buildings, warring with the thickets of lance-like rifles, groaned in the pitch-black night, alive with the endless screams of people who could find no way to live save tearing one another to pieces.   The sky dropped earthwards with the falling barrel, the distance between it and the machine guns and the gore-drenched bodies beneath less than the distance that divides the 50mm lens in the bag from the 55mm lens on the camera. The barrel takes seven seconds... more

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 around her. She starts asking questions, a quest that is an attempt to face her fears. She talks to a pious family man who sees in death the joy of meeting with God, a woman who lost her son, who has to live with his death on a daily basis,... more

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 this road, which is now the subject of my film. Planning for the road started in the 1970s and construction began in the 1980s—in fact, the very year I was born, directly beside the road in the Midan neighbourhood. It was never finished. The film tells the story of my relationship... more

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 stories were similar that led me to look closer at her life. For I have immigrated back to Turkey, due to the bloody events now taking place in Syria. My interest in her story began with a desire to overcome my fraught relationship with my mother, who found in our conversations... more

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 his son—was determined would be a small country of its own, independent of the Baath dictatorship… My father, who during the 1980s suffered from tyranny, the silencing of voicing and the suppression of freedoms, became consumed by his own private dictatorial inclinations, which manifested themselves most clearly in his relationship... more

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 have for the sake of a dream of freedom, and not to obtain that dream. Your worst nightmare is to live within the memory of a place, which was, for a day, vast and spacious and free, now returned, by war, to the Very tight and dark space it had... more

  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 in them, they share their painful experiences and search for a way of life in the loss and agony of the war around them. Their lives overlapped with the events of Damascus, their city and constant reference, they watch while its organs slowly shut down, as if – just like... more

Syrian filmmakers are touring European film festivals this week, screening "Our Terrible Country," a film that explores an intergenerational friendship amid kidnappings, war and exile.    In this documentary, a young man named Ziad laughs with his white-haired companion, Yassin. They are in Turkey, having fled Syria after Ziad was captured and tortured by Islamic State militants. Yassin is in exile, fearing both the government and the Islamic State.   The film is not about what happened in the past, said its director, Ali Atassi.  It was happening as they were shooting. "I did stop shooting when Ziad was arrested by the Islamic State," Atassi... more

BEIRUT: “Daaesh.” Yassin Haj Saleh pauses as if the word, the Arabic acronym for ISIS, were a question in need of an answer. “It’s a fitting name,” he answers himself, “for a monster.” Haj Saleh is sitting in Douma, in the eastern Ghouta, some 10 kilometers from central Damascus. Several weeks later, he and Syrian filmmaker Ziad Homsi have made the journey from Douma to Raqqa. “Daaesh,” Haj Saleh says, three months and several hundred kilometers beyond Raqqa, is “ ... the cancerous growth of our revolution.” These remarks are recorded in “Our Terrible Country,” a documentary co-directed by Homsi and his countryman Mohammed Ali Atassi. The film had its... more

Our Terrible Country’ takes us on the perilous journey of Yassin Haj Saleh, a well-known Syrian intellectual and dissident, and the young photographer Ziad Homsi who travel together in an arduous and dangerous route from the liberated area of Douma/Damascus to Raqqa in northern Syria, only to find themselves eventually forced to leave their home country for a temporary exile in Turkey.   While Yassin was detained in 1980 at the age of twenty, and remained imprisoned for 16 years, he is also one of the few intellectuals who participated clandestinely in the Syrian uprising since its earliest days in 2011. However,... more

Kulturgespräch 5.2.2014 Filme als Hoffnungsträger Cristin Lüttich von der Hilfsorganisation Bidayyat über die Arbeit syrischer Dokumentarfilmer Zuletzt waren es Fassbomben. Von Hubschraubern abgeworfen rasen sie unaufhaltsam auf die Erde zu und schlagen in Wohnhäusern ein. Wir kennen so viele furchtbare Bilder aus Syrien, dass wir aufgehört haben, sie zu zählen und wegschauen, schon wegen des Gefühls der eigenen Hilflosigkeit. Und so stehen diejenigen, die bis heute über den syrischen Bürgerkrieg berichten, vor der Frage, was für Bilder sie eigentlich noch zeigen sollen, damit wir nicht wegschauen. Christin Lüttich arbeitet für die syrische Nichtregierungsorganisation Bidayyat, die syrische Filmemacher unterstützt, die aus dem abgeschotteten Land... more

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 without hope for a visa or opportunity to travel. He decides to open a small shop near his home and takes part in some protests at the beginning of the revolution, which eventually led to his detention for several days by the Syrian security forces. On the advice of his... more

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 to join the front fighting of the Free Syrian army, though in different locations and points in time. On another morning, they successively met in a house of the Theshreen neighborhood which they call their headquarter. Here, people are preoccupied with life, but death is constant emergency. Observing the interaction... more

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 order to rest, Ahmad was taken to the city of Aleppo - a city where Ahmed eventually will join the Free Syrian army as a child soldier to fight alongside with his new companions on the front lines of this city. With each day of living and fighting with his fellow combatants... more

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 herself developing a strong bond to this place and to these fighters.  These fighters whose appearance initially frightened her, only to discover later - after a long period of staying with them not just a photographer, but as part of their group – how much they care for her, protect... more

Launched in 1988, the Ismailia festival is one of the major film festivals in the Arab world, and the first in the MENA region to be exclusively dedicated to documentaries and shorts. The festival's global appeal is a magnet for filmmakers over the world to screen their documentaries and shorts amidst an audience and industry that is heavily invested in these genres. Throughout the years, the previous installments of the festivals included sections for experimental films and held animation competitions. Film categories accepted Documentary Films competition [more than 52 min] Short Documentary Films competition [maximum 52 min.] Short Feature Films competition [Maximum 60 min.] Animation... more

KHRFF focuses on films with strong human rights themes at their core, and which are artistically significant. Karama Human Rights Film Festival is an on going event with multiple local and international activities year round that aim to expose, education and raise awareness for Adults, Youth and Children about their basic rights. Film categories accepted   Documentary Films  Fiction Films  Short Feature Films  Deadline for submission September of each year   More information www.karamafestival.org

DFI Film Financing supports Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) filmmakers all along the stages of the filmmaking process through grants and co-productions. Launched in May 2010, the Doha Film Institute’s film financing initiatives aim to support filmmakers in their storytelling, foster the exchange of knowledge, and enable filmmakers from the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries to fund and produce their own films. DFI supports Arab film projects of all kinds whether films for cinema or television. In addition, DFI will accept co-production proposals on a rotating basis for international projects. DFI has special grant and co-financing programmes as well as training workshops in... more

Established in 2010, SANAD (“support” in Arabic) is Abu Dhabi Film Festival’s fund (ADFF), for the development and post-production of films. It provides talented filmmakers from the Arab world with meaningful support that contributes to the development or the completion of their narrative and documentary feature films. SANAD seeks out bold and remarkable projects from both new and established filmmakers with the aim of encouraging intercultural dialogue and artistic innovation while building stronger networks within the region’s film industry. SANAD has 500,000 USD at its disposal annually and makes grants in the following categories: Development: Up to 20,000 USD per project Post-production: Up to 60,000 USD per project Information... more

CPH:DOX is devoted to supporting independent and innovative film and presents the best and brightest in contemporary non-fiction, art cinema and experimental film. During the eleven days of the festival, CPH:DOX also presents concerts, art exhibitions, five whole days of professional seminars, a screening market, and the international financing and co-production event CPH:FORUM, as well as the film production programme DOX:LAB. CPH:DOX was founded in 2003. Supported by film professionals as well as the national press, CPH:DOX grew from 14.000 admissions in its first year to an impressive 51.800 in 2012. In 2013 CPH:DOX runs from November 7.-17. CPH:DOX continues to... more

A festival to what end? To share with the public today’s cinemas. Yes, the cinema harbors a plural, a plurality of forms, formats, lengths, approaches and gazes. A unique moment when directors from all over the world rub nourish our present with all they have. If FIDMarseille’s roots are in the documentary, it is to remember realities are our ground, without forgetting that this soil propagates many different worlds and even more ways of bearing witness to them. And if this testimony is a necessity, an urgency, it is with the conscience that we must find the courage, the precision,... more

The world’s largest documentary film festival, IDFA offers a wide selection of diverse competition and non-competition films. The festival typically premieres major international documentaries that eventually make their way to some of the big-name festivals including Sundance. Incorporated into the festival are a series of sidebar events to promote audience and professional appreciation for documentary films.   Film categories accepted Feature-length documentary (longer than 60 min) Mid-length documentary (between 45-60 min) Further formats accepted, but partly non-competition section   Deadline for submission beginning of August   More information   http://www.idfa.nl/nl.aspx    

The first London Palestine Film Festival was held at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in Spring 1999. In response to public interest, the organisers decided in 2004 to establish the Palestine Film Foundation (PFF) as a body dedicated to the coordination of the festival and to the archiving of audiovisual materials related to Palestine.    The PFF is a nonprofit initiative which seeks to develop an audience for and to encourage the development of a Palestinian cinema and cinema related to Palestine. It is managed by a network of academics, curators, filmmakers, and volunteers from Palestine, the UK and... more

The Norwegian Short Film Festival is an important debut arena for many young filmmakers in Norway, and for the more established filmmakers perhaps the most important showcase for free and independent movies in Norway. The competition for international short film also attracts filmmakers from the rest of the world to Grimstad, and the festival wishes to arrange for bonds to be tied between the Norwegian and the international film community.   Film categories accepted Film must not exceed 35 minutes and have premiered after June of previous year Deadline for submission March of each year More information http://www.kortfilmfestivalen.no

The goal of the Montreal World Film Festival (Montreal International Film Festival) is to encourage cultural diversity and understanding between nations, to foster the cinema of all continents by stimulating the development of quality cinema, to promote filmmakers and innovative works, to discover and encourage new talents, and to promote meetings between cinema professionals from around the world.   The high profile WORLD COMPETITION includes world and international premieres. The international official Jury awards the various prizes for the feature films of his section: Grand Prix of the Americas, Special Grand Prix of the Jury, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best... more

Founded in 1982, Uppsala International Short Film Festival has since become Sweden’s premier arena for short film, having attained both national recognition of the Swedish Film Institute and genuine international renown. In addition, the festival is the most important international cultural event in Uppsala. Every year the festival shows more than 300 short films in five different sections exploring the diversity and richness of the short film – from new film to retrospective programmes, from fiction film, documentaries and experimental film to animations.   Uppsala International Short Film Festival is recognised by Academy of MotionPicture Arts and Sciences, which means that winning... more

The International Short Film Festival Winterthur is Switzerland’s most important short film festival. The festival takes place each year in November. It is a popular audience event and an important platform for the short film industry.   In 2012, 16.000 spectators visited the festival and we received 3.800 submissions for the national and international competitions, which offer cash awards that total 42.000 CHF (35.000 Euro) and an in-kind award of 11.500 CHF (9.500 Euro). Since 2005 the festival is connected to the European submission platform reelport. Apart from innovative programming, the International Short Film Festival is committed to the sustainable promotion of... more

Krakow Film Festival is one of the oldest film events dedicated to documentary, animated and short fiction films in Europe. During 8 festival days viewers have an opportunity to watch about 250 films from Poland and abroad. Films are presented in competitions and in special sections like retrospectives, thematic cycles, archive screenings. Festival is accompanied by exhibitions, concerts, open air screenings and meetings with the filmmakers. Every year Krakow Film Festival hosts about 600 Polish and international guests: directors, producers, film festival programmers and numerous audience from Krakow.   In the early 1990's, due to the political and economic transformations which caused... more

The !f Istanbul International Independent Film Festival was founded in 2008 and every February and March, it hosts some 70,000 film buffs and celebrated filmmakers from around the world.    Dedicated to showcasing the best in contemporary film, !f believes that the shared experience of cinema is a form of activism that has the power to connect people across borders and boundaries of all description. The festival is curated and based on thematic sections, some of which change every year to reflect issues that are gripping the world's - and filmmakers'- imagination.    In 2008, !f launched an international film competition - !f Inspired-... more

Göteborg International Film Festival is the leading film festival in Scandinavia and – with an audience of 200 000 visitors a year –  one of the largest festivals in the world. GIFF is always one step ahead in the search for new talent and tomorrow’s stars with:   * The prestigious Dragon Awards, including The Nordic Film Award and TIBIDA  * The Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award. * The Nordic Film Market, presenting the latest and upcoming Scandinavian films to international buyers, sales agents and festival programmers. * The Göteborg International Film Festival Fund, supporting young talent in developing countries, in cooperation with SIDA.   The festival... more