Lightdox Welcomes Abdallah Al-Khatib’s Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege
We are proud to announce the latest addition to our catalogue – Abdallah Al-Khatib’s directorial debut Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege. The poignant documentary will have its World Premiere at the 52nd edition of the International Film Festival Nyon (Visions du Réel), on Tuesday April 20th, at 9:00PM in the Capitole Leone and will be available online on VOD from Wednesday, 21 April, at 19:00 until Saturday, April 24th, at 19:00 competing in the International Feature Competition.
Following the World Premiere, the director Abdallah Al-Khatib will participate in a live Q&A which will take place on Wednesday, 21st, at 11:00, in a broadcast studio.
The documentary follows the daily life of the besieged inhabitants of the biggest Palestinian refugee camp – Yarmouk, in Damascus, Syria, who decided to face bombing, displacement and hunger with rallying, study, music, love and joy.
Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege is produced by Mohammad Ali Atassi for Lebanon-based Bidayyat for Audiovisual Arts and Jean-Laurent Csinidis for French- based Films de Force Majeure with the support of CNC, la Région Sud, Sundance Documentary Grant, Doha Film Institute, MEDIA Creative Europe, AFAC, Al Jazeera and others.
“After a history of films like Taste of Cement or Homeland (Iraq Year Zero), we feel Visions du Réel is a perfect place for the premiere of Abdallah Al-Khatib’s film. We are very happy to work on it together with the team of Lightdox in order to bring it to a wider audience.”
Producers Mohammad Ali Atassi & Jean-Laurent Csinidis
The district of Yarmouk (Damascus, Syria) sheltered the biggest Palestinian refugee camp in the world from 1957 to 2018. When the Syrian revolution broke out, the regime of Bashar Al-Assad saw Yarmouk as a refuge of rebels and resistance and set up a siege from 2013 on. Gradually deprived of food, medicine and electricity, Yarmouk was cut off from the rest of the world. Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege is a filmed diary that follows the fate of civilians during the brutal siege imposed by the Syrian regime. Yarmouk-born filmmaker Abdallah Al-Khatib composes a love song to a place that resists the atrocities of war with dignity and hope.
“Yarmouk-born filmmaker Abdallah Al-Khatib offers a unique and poetic look from within, documenting the siege and the ways in which the local community is coping with it, how small acts of humanity become the form of survival. We witness the atrocities of war, but also the companionship, sacrifice, children’s smiles. This is a story of human nature at its core.”
Anna Berthollet, co-founder and CEO of Lightdox