Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege

"Look for meaning."

Like a mantra, this exhortation which Abdallah Al-Khatib directs at himself—and at us from besieged Yarmouk—haunts the images captured by the filmmaker. Turning his camera as much toward the harrowing cruelty endured by the residents of the world's largest Palestinian refugee camp as toward fleeting moments of grace wrested from war, Al-Khatib, both witness and victim, sensitively weaves together these fragments of life that endure despite the siege.

Established in 1957 on the outskirts of Damascus, Yarmouk was besieged by Bashar al-Assad's army from 2013 to 2015. It is from within the rubble and suffering of those years that Al-Khatib documents the everyday lives of its residents. From relentless bombardments to the devastating famine caused by the Syrian government's blockade, nothing escapes the filmmaker's gaze—not even the smallest details snatched from the urgency of survival, which bear witness to the distorted temporality of life under siege.

While Yarmouk's fate was largely silenced by both the Syrian government and the international community, Little Palestine keeps these cinematic archives alive—the smiles, the songs, the stubborn resilience of those who refused to give in—and finds, in that irrepressible will to live, the very meaning the filmmaker urges us to seek.

Miriam Sbih
Author and Ph.D. candidate in comparative literature