Damascus Dreams
2022 | 78 minutes | French, English and Arabic with French and English subtitles | Canada
How does one remember a homeland they are so deeply connected to and disconnected from? Can one remember what they have not experienced, through others? Alienated from her Syrian heritage, filmmaker Émilie Serri grew up in Canada. In the liminal crevices between reality and myth, dream and nightmare, past and future, first and second generation, rests a homeland that is almost accessible. Through stories from refugees, conversations with her father, home movies, family photographs and illusory production, Emilie attempts to repatriate to this place that once was and yet can never be.
The screening of this film was followed by a discussion between filmmaker Emilie Serri and researcher Eylaf Bader Eddin.
About the Filmmaker
Émilie Serri is a Montreal based filmmaker, installation artist and curator. Distributed by LightCone in Paris and Funfilm in Montreal, her work has traveled in festivals internationally (The Netherlands, Switzerland, Brazil to name a few) and in artist centers and galleries throughout Canada. In 2018, she won the Bronfman award in contemporary art. Her first feature documentary Damascus Dreams premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2021, and won the prestigious International Critic’s Award (FIPRESCI) at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema.
About the Social Psychologist
Eylaf Bader Eddin is a post-doctoral researcher at The Prison Narratives of Assad’s Syria: Voices, Texts, Publics (SYRASP) project, ERC grant with his research "Musical Remains and Songs in Syrian Prisons and Exile" at EUME - Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin. He studied Arabic, English, and Comparative Literature in Damascus, Beirut, Paris, Aix-en-Provence, and Marburg. He was a post-doc researcher at Philipps-University Marburg working on political songs in Syria. He has many published researches in Arabic, English and French. He published his book in Arabic "When They Cried "Forever": the Language of the Syrian Revolution (2018) after receiving Sadiq Jalal al-Azm Award by Etijahat. His coming book will be released soon on "Translating the Language of the Syrian Revolution" by De Gruyter.
