This film offers a portrait of workers from Syria living in exile and presents an honest encounter with people who have lost their past and their future, refugees of war locked in a recurring present. Syrian construction workers build new skyscrapers in Beirut on the ruins of buildings destroyed by the Lebanese civil war, while their own homes are bombed and destroyed in neighboring Syria. A local curfew prohibits the workers from leaving the construction site after work, and every night they listen to news about the war in Syria below the scaffolding. This impressionistic and carefully edited documentary tells the story of refugees imprisoned by the modern world’s cement structures and endless wars, as each day’s repetition brings more work, more welding, and the same nightmare.
Screening with short film:
One Day in Aleppo
After five months of the suffocating siege and daily bombings in Aleppo, a group of children begin painting colors in their city’s streets to forget their daily struggles. This silent short film documents such scenes, expressing the pain and hope of thousands from inside the besieged city.
Director: Ali Alibrahim | Documentary | Runtime: 24 mins | 2017 | Country: Syria | Language: Arabic, English Subtitles | Minnesota Premiere
Press
"[S]killfully uses images and sound to plunge us into lives disrupted by years of conflict, revealing a continuous cycle where structures are erected in one place and demolished in the other." - Hollywood Reporter
Sponsors
TWIN CITIES ARAB FILM FESTIVAL
Mizna presents the thirteenth Twin Cities Arab Film Festival in partnership with the Film Society of Minneapolis St. Paul. The Arab Film Fest showcases modern Arab cinema, featuring debut screenings of independent narrative, documentary, and experimental features and shorts.