The last time French filmmaker Axel Salvatori-Sinz (Shebabs of Yarmouk) saw his good friend Hassan, he didn’t think it would be the last. A young Palestinian actor, Hassan lived in Yarmouk refuee camp in Syria and was active in theater and performing arts when he was arrested, tortured, and killed by the Syrian regime. Dear Hassan is Salvatori-Sinz’ painful reflection on what he could have done to help his friend, after a conversation with a journalist made him feel that he had not done enough.
BPFF: In Dear Hassan, a first person’s view of a rainy bike ride is juxtaposed with images of Hassan in Yarmouk. Can you talk about the night you filmed the bike ride? What happened?
AS: That night, it was raining in Paris. It was just after I spoke with a journalist, explaining to him that I wanted to use my film to make something related to Hassan, but I didn’t do it for personal reasons related to Hassan’s family. The journalist told me that I should have done something when Hassan was in jail. He made me realize that maybe it was possible to have helped him and done something.
I rode home on my bicycle, and all along the way, I was crying very hard, with a lot of tears. The rain kept falling down. In the film, you see old footage of Hassan in the camp and then footage from my bike ride home. It was these moments that I tried to put together in the film.
BPFF: Can you talk about how you met Hassan, who he was, and what he meant to you?
AS: Hassan was a dear friend whom I met in 2006 when I was in Syria. At that time, he was making theater in a cultural center in Yarmouk refugee camp, on the outskirts of Damascus. After that, in 2009, I returned and began to make my film Shebabs of Yarmouk until 2011. Every three months, I would come back to shoot. I wanted to make a movie about this group of young people, because they were full of hope and full of energy.
BPFF: Hassan was involved in theater.
AS: Yes. At the beginning of the Syrian war, he began to make a comedy show to denounce what was happening at that time in the refugee camp. He did a lot of comedic sketches. He wasn’t engaged with weapons. He was engaged with his acting, his sketches, and his voice.
–Alia Gilbert for BPFF
Dear Hassan screens Monday, October 20, 2014 at the Cambridge Public Library at 6 pm as part of a thematic slot called Shebab (Youth) in Palestine and Beyond. The show is free and open to the public. View the full festival schedule here.