Our Memory Belongs to Us
Syria Sees You is an annual program of contemporary Syrian cinema presented by the Regards Syriens collective, in collaboration with the Cinémathèque québécoise. Every edition is an opportunity to engage with alternative perspectives and experiences of the war in Syria, and to admire the strength of a cinema of exile and displacement created by Syrians seeking justice, freedom and peace.
For the past 6 years, Syria Sees You has presented a diversity of films–both by Syrian filmmakers who remain in Syria and others who live in exile–that provide a multitude of perspectives on and experiences of the counter-revolution that followed the 2011 uprisings. As the war in Ukraine goes on, these perspectives remain more necessary than ever. The international community’s indifference towards the 500,000 dead, 13.4 million Syrians in need of humanitarian and protection assistance, 6.7 million internally displaced, and 6.6 million refugees is brought into focus by the suffering of the Ukrainian people. The films in the 2022 program are gestures of memory, and glimpses of what it means to live in war, displacement, and exile. For the directors Ramy Farah, Ameer Fakher Eldin, Wael Kadlo, and Orwa Al Mokdad memory is a condition for survival. Regards Syriens collective presents the 6th edition of the contemporary Syrian cinema screening series Syria Sees You from June 21 to 23, 2022.
How do you survive? By forgetting or by remembering? This eternal question is still very alive for the three Syrian activists Yadan, Odai, and Rani. Before the war they were, respectively, a law student, a lover of literature, and a volleyball champion. In 2012, Yadan crossed the border into Jordan, carrying a hard disk containing more than 12,000 videos shot by himself and other citizen journalists in Daraa, the birthplace of the Syrian revolution. In this emotion-laden documentary, the old friends meet again in an empty theatre in Paris after a long period of separation. Here, on the stage, they share their experiences with us and the Syrian director Rami Farah, to whom Yadan entrusted his hard disk full of scenes of protest and atrocity. The director confronts the three men with their own footage projected on large screens, rekindling their suppressed memories and offering these citizen journalists their say in how Syrian history is presented, and how the story of the revolution is told. (IDFA)
