Soudade Kaadan

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.

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.”

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.

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

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.

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.