Aziza

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.

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.”

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.