Community Partner
Canada202183 minArabic, French, English with English subtitlesDocumentary, Experimental, Women Filmmakers
Directed by Émilie Serri, Damascus Dreams is a reflexive documentary essay presented in a series of sections framed by voiceovers of Serri and her father. The film explores and interrogates the fraught notions of dreams, and memories of “home,” moving loosely through old video footage of the family home in Syria, interviews with Syrians who had to leave or flee because of the civil war, conversations between Serri and her father, and poetic, dreamlike sequences. Serri gathers these stories and memories to hold against her own questions about a homeland she does not have access to—and one her father cannot return to.
To dream of home in Damascus Dreams is to grapple with grief. These collected reflections on yearning and loss become assemblage, a mingled presentation of impressions and emotions from a community with connections to a shared homeland, who express vastly different relationships to their experiences and memories.
- Jasmine Gui
OFFICIAL SELECTION
International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2021
Vancouver International Film Festival, 2021
Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, 2021
Émilie Serri
Born in Montreal, of Belgian Syrian origin, Émilie Serri is a filmmaker, songwriter, and visual artist. Her recent work focuses on the performance potential of archives and the cinematographic spaces that allow them to be activated.
10 Nov, 2021
to 19 Nov, 2021
PG
Community Partner
This presentation has no captions.
This presentation has English subtitles.
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Founded in Toronto in 1997, Reel Asian is Canada’s largest pan-Asian film festival and a year-round cultural organization dedicated to championing Asian and Asian diasporic artists and storytellers. What began as a grassroots film festival has grown into a national platform supporting filmmakers and audiences through screenings, education, industry initiatives, artist development, and community programming presented across Toronto, the GTA, and online across Canada.
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