The Yarmouk district of Damascus in Syria played home to the biggest Palestinian refugee camp in the world between 1957 and 2018. Abdallah Al-Khatib’s powerful, moving and gently poetic film charts the years between 2011 and 2015 when locals were gradually deprived of food, medicine and electricity, and Yarmouk was essentially cut off from the rest of the world…a world that seemed to have no interest it.
When the Syrian revolution broke out, the regime of Bashar Al-Assad perceived Yarmouk as a refuge for rebels and resistance, and laid a siege from 2013 onwards. As hunger, bombing and lack of aid took its toll on the beleaguered inhabitants, they did their utmost to carry on with their lives.
Little Palestine documents the fear but also the brief moments of joy; the bombardments but also the music, and the sense of love and compassion that helped keep the besieged as strong and resilient as possible in the most pitiful of conditions. While the film brims with anger and resentment (and very understandably so) it is also delicate and tender at times, allowing moment of beauty to peek out amidst the rubble and destruction. Abdallah Al-Khatib has composed a love song to a place that resists, with dignity, the atrocities of war.
The director has a strong link with the smiling youngsters who play amidst the ruins. As he sits and chats with one group, a little girl simply says: “We want to find a solution to get our childhood back.” With his mother Umm Mahmoud, who acts as a doctor in the community, Al-Khatib interviews an elderly woman who left Palestine in 1948 aged 18 and has lived in the city ever since with no intention of leaving.
Sometimes he just leaves the camera at the roadside to record what is happening around him – catching images of a young woman with bright red boots and coat among the drab surroundings, or filming a young man with one leg cycling through the debris. At other times he films protests (some angry, some mournful) or shoots footage of residents queuing for food aid. As the seasons pass it becomes harder and harder for the besieged – at one stage a large group of men try to force their way out, only to be driven back by gunfire.
In a delightful sequence towards the end of the film Al-Khatib comes across young Tasnin who is carefully cutting stalks of verbena from the ground around the ruined buildings. She knows exactly what she is doing, keeping away from poisonous roots, and chats to the director calmly about her life, how she dreams of food, all as bombs start to fall a short distance away. This is the world she has become used to.
The end credits note that 181 residents of Yarmouk starved to death during the siege (all are listed later in the credits) and that in 2015 Islamic State took control of the camp, some 80% of which was destroyed by Russian planes and Syrian army in 2018 as they drove Islamic State out. Abdallah Al-Khatib and his mother are now living in Germany but, as the end credits say, she would still like to move back to her community.
Lebanon-France-Qatar, 2021, 89mins
Dir/screenplay Abdallah Al-Khatib
Production Bidayyat for Audiovisual Arts, Films de Force Majeure, Doha Film Institute
International sales Lightdox
Editor Quataiba Barhamji
