Refugees take centre stage at Sharjah International Film Festival: "It's a responsibility to tell their story"

Asmaa is one of nearly 700,000 people who fled Syria for Jordan since war broke out in 2011, more than a decade ago, following mass protests against dictator Bashar al-Assad as part of the Arab Spring. Her life and that of her family were buried in chaos. The only solution came in the form of a refugee camp, namely Zaatari in neighbouring Jordan, the second largest in the world after Kutupalong in Bangladesh. Her story, however, managed to transcend borders to be told and brought to the big screen by the young Mexican filmmaker Alejandra Alcalá. 

The Sharjah International Film Festival for Children and Young People (SIFF) decided to include in its line-up a documentary that, in reality, was born with the vocation of being as similar as possible to a film. "From the beginning, we were concerned about going beyond the conventional frameworks of what a documentary is," explained Alcalá in conversation with Atalayar. Said and done. The intention was embodied in a film that was reciprocated by the audience that attended the Al-Jawaher convention hall, located on the outskirts of Sharjah, on Thursday afternoon. It was one of the most eagerly awaited titles and its screening proved to be a success.

In The Neighbourhood Storyteller, the film's protagonist, Asmaa, builds an indelible bond with her daughter and the other girls crammed into Zaatari through reading. Books are the common thread of a story that allows this Syrian mother to develop a personal project to make life in the camp more bearable and, why not, to allow the girls to imagine a better future, a future beyond Zaatari. In order to do so, Asmaa will have to deal with the deep-rooted conservatism and the fierce shyness of young girls who are not used to expressing themselves. 

The director explains that the aim was not to make a documentary about life in a refugee camp, "among other things because there are many such films", but to construct a story capable of reflecting the human capacity to overcome and turn difficulties into opportunities to grow. "We aim to create content related to the refugee crisis from a positive point of view, but that does not mean that the documentary does not reflect sadness". Sadness, in fact, is very much present throughout the 60 minutes. "The message we want to send is that we need to build self-confidence to change things," Alcalá stressed. 

There were a number of factors that made it difficult to get it right. The filmmaker revealed to Atalayar one of the most important challenges she had to face: filming live, while the story unfolds. "That's a challenge, in the end, because you're not telling something that has already happened, something you can control, but the events are happening as you're filming them, so we risked the project becoming boring or there not being a clear transformation in the girls". But the hours of filming, conducted inside the refugee camp for 14 days straight, paid off.

Much of the success at the Sharjah festival was due to Asmaa herself, who recommended minutes before the screening to "watch the documentary with the heart and not with the eyes". The protagonist "made the cameras disappear as soon as she spoke", acknowledges Alcalá. So much so that the girls were barely restrained during the filming. "We also didn't know how [Asmaa] was going to behave in front of a camera because, although we talked to her a lot before we started, everything changes when you start filming. Our work is important, of course, but the person in front of the camera has a lot of merit, and she felt very comfortable," says the Mexican filmmaker. 

"For us, it was important for Asmaa to tell her own story, to be able to amplify her voice," insists Alcalá, who also acknowledges the difficulty in gaining the protagonist's trust and involving her in the process. Asmaa did not want to convey an image of vulnerability, but in the end she manages to show herself as she is, opening up to the camera, something the director describes as "the bravest act one can do". "If you are like that, it's a real responsibility to tell your story," she says.

Another challenge was the language. The film is recorded in Arabic, but they had an interpreter who simultaneously translated the conversations. "We had hours and hours and hours of content. We cut down on the ideas and concepts that we were more or less interpreting. From there, the work has been to refine the result", explains Alcalá about a story that is easier to identify with if you are in the Middle East "because it's something they live close to home". "I think it will be easier to reach people in the Arab world," she admits, "but it is capable of reaching much further and you can feel challenged as a girl in Latin America or as a man in Europe. 

Like many other film industry professionals, the Mexican director has been summoned to Sharjah by the Emirate's authorities to participate in SIFF. "I'm happy that this kind of festival exists, because the objective is in line with our objective when making documentaries, that is, that they reach a young audience and inspire people to pursue their dreams. Here they have made that clear from the very first minute". 

"To see how girls come up to you and tell you that they want to be an actress or a director... it's very clear that the festival is attracting the right audience and, moreover, it is leaving an engraved message in children, who, at the end of the day, are the future. It's important that they feel inspired and that they have courage and confidence," she concludes.