DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY:

Henrik Bohn Ipsen, DFF

CAMERA OPERATOR:

Samer Zayat

SOUND RECORDING:

Olivier Dandre

SOUND DESIGNER:

Henrik Garnov

COMPOSER:

Kinan Azmeh

POST SUPERVISOR & COLORIST:

Anders V. Christensen

SUPPORTED BY:

The Danish Film Institute, Danida, Danida Film Institute, IDFA Bertha Fund Europe (supported by Creative Europe MEDIA Program), IDFA Bertha Fund Classic, International Media Support, EURIMAGES, Creative Europe MEDIA Program, Timbuktu Foundation, Asia Pacific Screen Awards

TV BROADCASTERS:

DR 

YADAN DRAJI born in 1981. He first studied management then media at Damascus university. He participated in the Syrian uprising from day one. He was detained by the regime for being an activist. After his release, he devoted all his time to covering the daily events in Southern Syria. He connected with Arab and international media outlets under a fake name: “Odai Salem”.

He became one of the lead organizers of the anti regime demonstrations. He helped structure and organize the work of videographers in Daraa through establishing the Daraa media collective. Draji was trained in documenting the Human rights violations and led the local team that was working under the umbrella of the Syrian committee for justice and accountability in Daraa. After he fled Daraa to Jordan in late 2012, Yadan worked as a Humanitarian affairs officer in UNOCHA’s Jordan office Southern Syria unit in Amman until the end of 2018. In late 2017 He was chosen by the American foreign affairs ministry amongst 20 Syrians in Jordan to attend the International Visitors Leadership program in Washington.

Together with other Syrian activists in Jordan, he founded Auranitis Life Line NGO in 2014. Here he became its Chairman, then Executive program director, until 2019. Auranitis played a major role in supplying humanitarian aid to the southern part of Syria and it was the main partner for USaid, EU and UN in their humanitarian programs in south Syria. In late 2019, Yadan and his family asked for asylum in Holland. He lives with his family in Amsterdam and currently takes courses at Laiden university in human rights and international law.

ODAI AL-TALAB born in Daraa in 1988. Odai was an athlete, he was studying physical education when the revolution started, and couldn’t pursue his studies because he was wanted by the Syrian security forces. He is a former player in Shu’lah volleyball club in Daraa and at the Syrian national volleybalL team.

He is a founding member of the Daraa local committee which organizes and reports on protests as part of the Syrian uprising. Together with Yadan and other activists, Odai founded the Daraa media collective. The collective’s videos and photographic reports of injuries and deaths of protestors have been used by many international media outlets.

Odai played a major role in organizing demonstrations and documenting human rights violations by the regime forces in Daraa. He got shot twice in his leg by snipers from the Syrian army while he was reporting. He fled Daraa in late 2013 and currently lives with his wife and children in Manchester in the UK where he works for Uber eats.

RANI AL MASALMA Born in Daraa in 1981. He was studying law in Damascus university when the revolution started. Rani was involved in media activities from the early days of the Syrian uprising. He was documenting and filming the protests and the human rights violations carried out by the regime. Rani was involved in helping field hospitals and supplying materials to them.

He was later involved with the opposition fighting groups, in charge of documenting and filming. Rani stayed and fought in Daraa until late 2017.

Rani fled to Germany to join his wife and son who he had never seen. He now studies German and lives with his family in Hamburg.

RAMI FARAH is a Syrian dancer, actor and filmmaker born in Damascus in 1980. He first studied dance in Damascus at the High Institute for Dramatic Arts and has traveled the world with different troupes. Farah has attended many training courses and workshops in contemporary film and dance in France and Denmark. His first films and videos blend dance and audiovisual material. “Time - Space”, made in 2004, unfolds as an abstract dialogue between a ceiling fan and a chair in a silent room. It was followed by “Point”, a short, oneiric video in which a two-faced camera attacks its subject. The video piece was screened internationally in several museums and at festivals. Farah also co-created, and starred in, the extensive work “Not A Matter of If But When” with Julia Metzer and David Thorne which considers “how memories and histories are produced in accordance with shifting categories of what is and is not permissible speech.” (Frieze, 1/10/08) and the complex interaction between personal and official memory, history, and narrative continues to inform his work today. 

Farah’s meeting with the revered Syrian director Omar Amiralay, who would later go on to be his mentor, marked a turning point in his approach to film-making. Amiralay encouraged Farah to »go search for the truth!« And so he did. After graduating from The Arab Film Institute in 2007, Rami made a 35-minute documentary about the Golan Heights entitled “Silence”, which tells stories of coerced exile from the perspectives of two people who had to leave their homes after the Israeli occupation of Golan Heights in the 1960s.

A story that is at once political and deeply personal since Farah’s own parents were among the people who were displaced. As a son of exiled parents who now finds himself in exile as well, Farah is a self-proclaimed “exile expert”, and throughout his oeuvre, and across art forms, themes of belonging and displacement recur.

These preoccupations are perhaps most pronounced in Farah’s first feature-length documentary from 2019: “A Comedian in a Syrian Tragedy” that sees Farah follow his beloved subject, the famous Syrian actor Fares Helou, even as he flees Syria and enters France and in his most recent work “Our Memory Belongs To Us” which reunites three exiled Syrian citizen journalists on an empty stage near Paris to talk to them about documenting the early days, and the brutal dismantling, of The Syrian Revolution. Rami is also an actor, known for “Carlos” (2010), “Exfiltrés” (2019) and “Le Bureau des Légendes” (2015).

LYANA SALEH is a French-Palestinian journalist and film producer based in Paris since 2005.

She established her Paris-based film company On Screen Off Record in 2015 and set up a division in Palestine in 2017. OSOR is a film house which aims to produce creative documentaries coming from the Arab world and to promote Arabic documentaries in the European and International market. OSOR aims to help talented voices from the Middle East translate their visions and stories into quality documentaries that can reach audiences worldwide. The team is made up of a lot of different backgrounds; Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese.

Saleh has more than thirteen years of experience in Radio, TV and film.

She has worked as a producer for many radio shows in Monte Carlo Doualiya (Radio France International). In 2009, she joined France 24 TV channel where she still works as a senior culture editor. Lyana is a Eurodoc graduate (2015) and ‘A Comedian in a Syrian Tragedy’, which premiered in IDFA 2019, was her first feature-length documentary as a producer. In 2015 she won Le Grand prix in FIGRA festival in France for her film “The Rebel From Raqqa”.

SIGNE BYRGE SØRENSEN is a two-time Oscar® nominee for producing The Act of Killing in 2014 and The Look of Silence in 2016. She was nominated for the Producer’s Guild Award in 2016 for The Look of Silence. She won Cinema Eye awards for the production of both these films.

Signe Byrge Sørensen has been a producer since 1998. She began in SPOR Media in 1998, moved to Final Cut Productions ApS in 2004 and co-founded Final Cut for Real ApS in 2009. She has produced documentaries in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Thailand, Indonesia, Colombia and Argentina, besides Denmark and Sweden. While at SPOR Media she was the Danish co-producer for Steps for the future. She holds an MA in International Development Studies and Communication Studies from Roskilde University, Denmark, 1998 (1st). She did the European co-production courses EURODOC in 2003, EAVE in 2010 and ACE in 2018. In 2014 Signe received the Danish Documentary Award called the Roos Prize and the IB award given by the Danish Director’s Association. She also received the Danish Award called The Timbuktu Prize.

DR. DIMA SABER is a Reader in Media & Cultural Studies and Associate Director for External Funding and Research Development at the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (Birmingham City University). Her research is focused on media depictions of conflict and on the role of archival records in identity building processes, exploring ways digital literacy can foster social impact and enhance the work of political activists in post-revolution and conflict countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Palestine.

She has been involved in the documentary project since its inception as a lead researcher, focusing her work on the mapping and analysis of the crowd-sourced archives which formed the basis of the film. Her involvement resulted in a number of academic publications, including a book chapter in ‘(W)archives. Archival Imaginaries and Contemporary Wars’ (2020) which brings perspectives from Syrian archivists and videographers on the sustainability of archives online, a chapter in ‘Refugee Imaginaries‘ (2019) on the role of refugee archives in the making of a history of the Syrian revolution, and an article in Archives and Records (2017) on the value of crowd-sourced Syrian archives as memories of the Syrian war. She benefitted from the support of her centre and the university since 2014, and the Daraa archive forms the basis of an ongoing open archive research project at BCU.

Saber, D. (2020), ‘Transitional what?’: Perspectives from Syrian videographers on the YouTube take-downs and the ‘video-as-evidence’ ecology’ in Agostinho, D. et al. (Eds.), (W)archives. Archival Imaginaries and Contemporary Wars, pp. 387-410, Sternberg Press. 

Saber, D. and Long, P. (2019), ‘Refugee writing, refugee history: Locating the refugee archive in the making of a history of the Syrian war’ in Durrant, S. et al. (Eds.), Refugee Imaginaries: Research Across the Humanities, pp. 444-462, Edinburgh University Press.

Saber, D. and Long, P. (2017), ‘I will not leave, my freedom is more precious than my blood’ From affect to precarity: crowd-sourced citizen archives as memories of the Syrian war’. Archives and Records, 1: 38, pp. 80-99, doi: 10.1080/23257962.2016.

ANNE KÖHNCKE, originally from Norway before moving to Copenhagen in 1997, has been a producer since 2009 when she co-founded Final Cut for Real. Anne Köhncke has produced and co-produced a number of documentaries including Cathedrals of Culture, a groundbreaking film project in stunning 3D and executive produced by Wim Wenders. Köhncke has also produced Pervert Park (2014) and Death of a Child (2017) both by Frida and Lasse Barkfors.

Köhncke has furthermore produced two films by Carl Olsson: Patrimonium (2019) and Meanwhile on Earth (2020). She is a member of the Danish Film Academy and of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

GLADYS JOUJOU is a Paris-based freelance film editor of Lebanese origin. She has been working both on feature films and documentaries selected and awarded at films festivals around the world. In recent years, she was a tutor at IDFA Academy Summer School and has also consulted on many films and taken part in workshops in Kuwait, Egypt, and Lebanon. Her work on fiction films has spanned large-scale Hollywood productions such as Oliver Stone’s Alexander, to French productions such as Jacques Doillon’s Raja and independent Arab films such as Ghassan Salhab’s Beyrouth Fantôme and Philippe Van Leeuw’s InSyriated. Her work on documentary films includes Raed Andoni’s Ghost Hunting - Istyad Ashbah, Rami Farah’s A Comedian in a Syrian Tragedy, Lina Soualem’s Their Algeria, Suhaib Gasmelbari’s Talking about Trees, Hamed Zolfaghari’s Women of the Sun: A Chronology of Seing, Samaher Alqadi’s As I Want. Currently, she is working on Iraq’s Invisible Beauty from director Sahim Omar Khalifa.

HENRIK BOHN IPSEN Born 1961. Ipsen is a cinematographer, graduating from The National Film School of Denmark in 1997. Henrik Bohn Ipsen has worked on a high number of remarkable documentaries since the mid-eighties, including Krigsfotografen by Boris Bertram (2019), Hjertelandet by Janus Metz (2018), Rekonstruktion Utøya by Carl Javér (2018), En Fremmed Flytter ind (2018) and Kimberley i Kabul (2015) by Nicole Nielsen Horanyi, BIG Time by Kaspar Astrup Schrøder (2017), Democrats by Camilla Nielsson (2014), Mit Afghanistan by Nagieb Khaja (2012), Fodbold er Gud by Ole Bendtzen (2010) and Den Tyske Hemmelighed by Lars Johansson (2005).

HENRIK GARNOV is a graduate of the Danish Film School from 1989 in sound design. He has made sound design on more than 120 fiction features and a number of documentaries. Amongst his most recent works are “Les Sautuers”, 2016, “Skammerens Datter”, 2015, “The Look of Silence”, 2014, “Freak Out”, 2014, “The Act of Killing” and more. Garnov is known for his sensitivity to the vision of the director, his understanding of the film as a whole, his great technical skills and skills in collaboration and for his quiet but intense enthusiasm for getting the best possible sound experience to the audience. Henrik Garnov also did the sound design on “A Comedian in a Syrian Tragedy”.

ANDERS V. CHRISTENSEN has been involved in many Danish documentaries, and the post-production processes. He is known for his work on; The Possession (2012), Standing on Water (2015), Sorgenfri (2015), En Rapporten om Festen og Gæsterne (2020), 7 Years of Lukas Graham (2020), Angrebet – Omars vej til Krudttønden (2020), The Cave (2019), Democrats (2014), Armadillo (2010), and many others. He has, besides color grading, also engaged in production management, cinematography, visual graphics, editing, and producing. Anders recently won the Roos price – a price which intends to “highlight and appreciate a person of noteworthy engagement in Danish documentaries”.

KINAN AZMEH Hailed as “intensely soulful” and a “virtuoso” by The New York Times and “spellbinding” by The New Yorker, Winner of OpusKlassik award in 2019 clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh has gained international recognition for what the CBC has called his “incredibly rich sound” and his distinctive compositional voice across diverse musical genres. Originally from Damascus, Syria, Kinan Azmeh brings his music to all corners of the world as a soloist, composer and improviser. Notable appearances include the Opera Bastille, Paris; Tchaikovsky Grand Hall, Moscow; Carnegie Hall and the UN General Assembly, New York; the Royal Albert hall, London and in his native Syria at the opening concert of the Damascus Opera House. He has appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the Qatar Philharmonic and the Syrian Symphony Orchestra among others, and has shared the stage with such musical luminaries as Yo- Yo Ma, Marcel Khalife, Aynur, Daniel Barenboim, and Jivan Gasparian. Kinan’s compositions include several works for solo, chamber, and orchestral music, as well as music for film, live illustration, and electronics.