Yarmouk, journal d'un assiégé ( Our Little Palestine)

YARMOUK, JOURNAL D’UN ASSIÉGÉ (international title: OUR LITTLE PALESTINE) is an archive film with a very personal point of view, based on footage shot between 2012 and 2015 inside Yarmouk camp in Syria.Within this small urban area (located on the outskirts of Damascus), there has been a Palestinian refugee camp as from the 1948 exodus, gradually being known as ‘Little Palestine’ for several generations of Palestinians. After the 2015 ISIS invasion, it was completely destroyed by the Syrian regime and the Russian forces in 2018.Abdallah Al-Khatib was born in Yarmouk. He was the one to film most of the footage and write the film. He will also be the voice-over narrating the film. From within, he tells the story of the period that preceded the arrival of ISIS: in the wake of the repression of the 2011 Syrian Revolution, the regime of Bachar Al-Assad set up a particularly radical siege between 2013 and 2105, whose purpose was to slowly let the inhabitants of the camp die, be it of starvation, sickness or exhaustion.While being himself involved in the situation, Abdallah documented with dignity and sensitivity the downward spiral of the inhabitants as the noose tightened – but also the amazing resources of joy, love, hope and life which made them resist. The story will mostly focus on three characters: Abdallah’s mother, an old man Abu Rafat, and Abdallah himself.Expelled from the camp in 2015 then forced into exile away from Syria in 2018, Abdallah moved to Turkey, then Germany carrying along more than 300 hours of footage. Alongside a lengthy work of technical treatment and derushing of the material, we are working on collecting other footage necessary to the narration or the context from third parties.