Born in Damascus
2021 · 15m · UK
Directed by Laura Wadha
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A Scottish-Syrian filmmaker reconnects with her cousin Lujain via video call after more than a decade apart, their relationship severed by the Syrian civil war. Weaving archival holiday footage shot in Damascus before the conflict with present-day FaceTime recordings, the two cousins attempt to piece together shared memories and reckon with what was lost.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
FaceTime grief doc made of home videos and pixels — the form does interesting work but Guardian-doc framing tends to flatten everything into the same wistful key. Sincere, not surprising.
The desktop-documentary lineage of Kevin B. Lee and Kitty Green meets a deeply personal diasporic archive — pixelated FaceTime as the formal embodiment of severance itself. A measured and necessary addition.
Guardian-backed 15:20 desktop doc that makes the FaceTime window itself the formal device — pixelated diaspora intimacy cut against sunlit pre-war VHS is exactly the kind of medium-as-meaning choice I love. Doc'd structure stands or falls on how Lujain's screen presence reads.
Reviews
This is meditative, melancholy, moving.
A poignant depiction of the effects of war from a very personal perspective... [it has] much broader universality in what it depicts, even though it is inherently deeply personal.
Festivals
- Edinburgh International Film Festival 2021
- Berlinale (Berlin International Film Festival) 2022, Crystal Bear for Best Short Film
- Glasgow Short Film Festival 2022
- Encounters Short Film & Animation Festival 2022
- Mo & Friese Children's Film Festival Hamburg 2022, NEON Prize
- doxs! Documentary Film Festival 2022, Special Mention