Last year, Cate Blanchett and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)’s Hubert Bals Fund unveiled the Displacement Film Fund, a scheme set up to provide five displaced directors with grants for short films that are worth €100,000 ($120,000) each. And on Friday evening, IFFR presented the world premieres of the first five shorts, made by directors from Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and Ukraine, in the Dutch port city on Friday.
The grant recipients were Iranian auteur Mohammad Rasoulof (The Seed of the Sacred Fig), Maryna Er Gorbach, the Ukrainian director of Klondike, Somali-Austrian filmmaker Mo Harawe (The Village Next to Paradise), Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat, who fled to Germany and will next month open the Berlin Film Festival, and Syria’s Hasan Kattan (Last Men in Aleppo).
In a conversation with THR and during a Rotterdam press conference, Kattan and Harawe discussed their inspirations and hopes for their respective films.
Kattan’s 40-minute-long Allies in Exile, from production company Grain Media that is also handling sales, stars himself and his best friend Fadi Al Halabi.
“For 14 years, Syrian filmmakers Hasan Kattan and Fadi Al-Halabi have journeyed together through war and storytelling. Their bond was forged on the frontlines of revolution where their cameras recorded terror and hope, laughter and heartbreak – moments that defined a generation,” reads a synopsis. “Years later, their story takes an unexpected turn. Confined inside a U.K. asylum hotel, Hasan and Fadi document a new chapter shaped not by bombs, but by waiting, bureaucracy, and exile. Amid rising anti-refugee hostility, they turn the camera inward, exploring friendship and displacement and how filming itself becomes an act of survival when the future is so uncertain.”
In discussing Allies in Exile, Kattan said: “Every second, every frame is a memory.” Making the film was another chance to stay connected to his homeland, but also part of a healing process for him as a displaced filmmaker, he shared. How does he feel now? “I feel better, I feel home,” he shared.
‘Allies in Exile’
Kattan told THR that he was happy to be able to tell a major story with financial backing from the Displacement Film Fund. “I learned making films and storytelling in Syria. We were dreaming of freedom as young people to improve our country,” he shared. “Dreaming and freedom broke the dictatorship. Storytelling became something unique for us. This is how we communicated with the world. And from that point, I have believed in storytelling. And I believe we can change a lot of things. We can make our voices more resilient by making more stories.”
Being stuck in a U.K. hotel for asylum seekers, storytelling provided a coping mechanism. “I believed in storytelling to survive mentally, because I needed to talk,” the filmmaker recalled. “I needed to express my feelings, to share what’s going on. And for me, storytelling is important to remember who we are, what we are, and where we are from. Sometimes I also see it as [documenting] history for the future.”
Concluded Kattan: “I really believe in storytelling as a way of surviving, of changing reality, of trying to understand each other, trying to change the harsh reality that we are in.”
Harawe’s short, supported by the Displacement Film Fund, is called Whispers of a Burning Scent. “On the day of a decisive court hearing and an important wedding performance, a quiet wedding musician finds his private life exposed to public scrutiny,” reads a synopsis for the 28-minute-long film. “Accused of exploiting his marriage, he moves between courtroom, city streets and stage, carrying the weight of judgment, loyalty, and unspoken guilt. Forced to make a restrained but irreversible decision, the film observes a man whose inner truth remains elusive, caught between devotion, dignity and loss.”
Written and directed by Harawe, the film stars Omar Abdi, Canab Axmed Ibraahin, Nuh Musse Berjeeb, Maxamed Axmed Maxamed, Mohamed Mire, and Nuura Mohamoud Abdi.
The filmmaker recalled shooting the film and other projects in Somalia, calling it an opportunity to “build some kind of infrastructure” there. Asked about his story, Harawe said: “Although this is a displacement fund, really the story doesn’t have to be about that specifically, but about the experiences or the things that you, as someone who lived through displacement, have.”
His protagonist is more displaced from himself and his community. “You can be displaced in your own society,” explained the creative. He also pointed out that not every displaced person is in the same stage. “Displacement has different states, or stages,” Harawe offered. “Someone may be going through that phase of displacement, but I feel I am now in another stage or another phase of that.”
‘Whispers of a Burning Scent’
Displaced persons are so used to uncertainties that “they are the most flexible people,” the director also offered. “You’re always mastering your life.” About the first cohort of the Displacement Film Fund, Harawe told THR: “I would love this film to still travel with these other films, if there is an opportunity. … I am sure the films will forever be together somehow.”
He highlighted that he felt a real responsibility to help make the first round of Displacement Film Fund projects a success. “I know a lot of people who really need this kind of a platform,” Harawe emphasized. “And I know how much storytelling means to a lot of people, especially people who are really going through a lot and are displaced, whether they are internally displaced or externally. It’s a survival thing for them to share, because that’s who we are as human beings. That’s how we survive. I’m really privileged that we have had this opportunity.”
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