Documentary Films - Competition 2017 / A Memory in Khaki / Qatar 2016
A Syrian director dusts off memories of the past, when people were persecuted for their political beliefs. A poetic portrait of people whose homes have been turned to rubble, and a story that tells us that a free life can never be monochromatic, let alone khaki.
“I can’t be myself anywhere else,” Alfoz Tanjour says at the beginning of his heavy narrative on Damascus, the hometown he had to leave years earlier. He and other Syrians speak about the era before they were forced to flee the reach of the merciless regime; they dust off memories of the past when people were persecuted for their political beliefs. “We were demonstrating to bring down the khaki color.… We were against the color, in its symbolism,” says one of the protagonists, Ibrahim, about his 1970s childhood, and about the militaristic state apparatus that tried to extinguish the least indication of resistance. The ever-present fear, unexpected outbreaks of terror, dark prisons – these are the common denominators of the majority of stories, and they led to revolutionary outbreaks in Syrian society. A poetic portrait of people whose homes have been turned to rubble, collected fragments of memory in a film that tells us that free life can never be monochromatic, let alone khaki.
Martin Horyna
108 min / Color, DCP
European premiere
Director Alfoz Tanjour
/ Screenplay Alfoz Tanjour, Louai Haffar
/ Dir. of Photography Ahmad Dakroub
/ Music Kinan Azmeh
/ Editor Alfoz Tanjour
/ Producer Louai Haffar
/ Contact Louai Haffar
Alfoz Tanjour (b. 1975, Salameih, Syria) studied direction at the Academy of Fine Arts in Moldova (2000–04). After graduation he made several short features, including the award-winning The End of a Red Balloon and A Little Sun (2007, Bronze Tanit Award at the Carthage FF and a Special Jury Prize at the Mons festival in Belgium). Documentaries, however, dominate his filmography: Damascus… Symphony of a City (2009), Black Stone (2010), Cola Bridge (2010), Wooden Rifle (2011, awarded at the Aljazeera IDFF and at China’s Gold Panda Awards), Outside the City’s Walls (2012), and Faraway, So Close to the Homeland (2014). His feature debut is in the works.
Louai Haffar
, , Doha
Qatar
Phone: +974 332 587 62
E-mail: [email protected]
Alfoz Tanjour
Film Director
Louai Haffar
Producer
Eyad Ahmad
Producer
First-hand brews throughout the year.
Be among the first to learn about upcoming events and other news. We only send the newsletter when we have something to say.
