Film: Our Terrible Country
by Mohamed Ali Attasi & Ziad Homsi
Syria 2014
Documentary, 85 min, Arabic OmeU
Discussant:
Salam Said (Berlin)
Curator: Viola Shafik
This Film Screening and the Discussion is part of the Arabic Film Series "Beyond Spring", organized by Mayadin Al-Tahrir e.V., EUME and the Werkstatt der Kulturen.
Synopsis:
This road movie portrays the perilous journey of well-known intellectual Yassin al-Haj Saleh and young photographer Ziad Homsi through Syria, at a time when the country edges towards the brink. Yassin (53), who spent 16 years in prison for belonging to the Syrian left, goes underground in 2011 to serve Syria’s popular uprising, while Ziad (24) - occasionally fighting with the rebels - takes photographs in his hometown Douma. In this Damascene suburb – where Yassin and his wife Samira Khalil found shelter - the two men meet and become friends. Together, they embark on an adventurous journey through the desert to al-Haj Saleh’s native town Raqqa in Northeast Syria. Upon their arrival, Raqqa is occupied by the "Islamic State in Iraq and Levant" (ISIS), which also kidnapped two brothers of Yassin.
Salam Said is a Syrian economist. She received her PhD from the Institute for WorldEconomics and International Management at Bremen University in 2010. Since then she has lectured on Arab Economies and political economy of the Arab countries at different universities in Germany. Currently she is lecturing Political Economy of the Arab Countries with the focus on Syria at the Freie Universität Berlin, Department of Political and Social Science. Her research interests focus on Syrian economy, as well as economic policies and socio-economic development in the Arab region. In addition to her publications on the economic issues, she wrote contributions/articles on the link between the socio-ecoomic development and the uprising in Syria. The results of her research on „The Uprising and Economic Interests of the Syrian military“ will be published in the Routledge-St Andrews Syrian Studies series entiteld The Syrian Uprising 2011-2014: Roots and Trajectories, edited by Raymond Hinnebusch and Omar Imady in 2016.