Khaberni - The cinema committee at Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation organizes, starting tomorrow, Tuesday, an event titled "Bassel Al-Khatib Retrospective". Films by the Syrian director Bassel Al-Khatib will be shown over three consecutive days, starting at 6:30 PM, in the cinema hall at the foundation's headquarters in Jabal Amman.
The term "retrospective" in cinema refers to organizing a series of film screenings that focus on the works of a particular director or actor.
The screenings begin tomorrow, Tuesday, with the Syrian film "Hayat", produced in 2024, which tells the story of a girl named Hayat, a simple girl living bound by ignorance, bigotry, and deprivation. She spends her days as fate has determined for her, growing up without love, without dreams, without hope. One day, fate brings a catastrophe from which there is no escape but the sentence of death. In the moment when death becomes imminent, fate intervenes again to legislate a new horizon for life, but with an irreplaceable loss.
On Wednesday, the film "Two Days", produced in 2023, will be shown. It portrays a social drama revolving around (Ghaith), a seventy-year-old man who repairs electrical appliances, but discovers two children hiding in his car, inadvertently making their destinies intersect and becoming responsible for them by mere coincidence, as events unfold.
On Thursday, the film "Mariam", produced in the year 2012, will be screened. The film narrates a Syrian tale in a different historical narrative, taking us through a journey in time spanning nearly a hundred years through the stories of three women named Mariam from three different eras.
Bassel Al-Khatib is a Palestinian filmmaker, writer, and producer of cinema and television, born in 1962 in Hilversum, Netherlands. His father, the late Arab poet Youssef Al-Khatib, graduated from the College of Film Directing and Television at the Cinema Institute in Moscow in 1987. He is the founder and director of Joy Film for cinema and television production in Damascus. He is also the founder and dean of the Cinema Institute in Damascus and has been working in directing and producing films and television series since 1990. He has directed 7 short films and 13 feature films including: The Last Message, Mariam, The Mother, Syrians, The Father, Ibn Badis, The Confession, Damascus Aleppo, For the Rest of Life, The Bishop, The Wise Man, Two Days, Hayat. He has also directed 29 long television series, some of the most important are: Days of Rage, I am Jerusalem, Nasser, Nizar Qabbani, Thi Qar, Abu Zayd Al-Hilali, Hulagu, Balqis, It Happened in Damascus, Letters of Love and War, Little Women, Hanin, Adham Al-Sharqawi, Lion of the Desert, Harair, Guardian of Jerusalem.
Al-Khatib has won several awards in Arab and international film and television festivals. He resides and works in Damascus, Syria.
