Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege

The district of Yarmouk in Damascus was, from 1957 on, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in the world. When the civil war in Syria broke out the district was caught in heavy fighting. From 2013 the regime laid a siege on it. Food, medicine and electricity were cut off little by little, and the district lost its connection to the outside. Abdallah Al-Khatib was born in Yarmouk and lived there until he was driven out in 2015. Between 2011 and 2015 he and his friends recorded daily life under the siege. The footage holds gatherings, lessons and music as much as hunger and shelling. The documentary shows at close range the ways people endured. This French, Lebanese and Qatari coproduction, eighty nine minutes long, was completed in 2021.