“We are condemned to hope. This phrase by Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous inspired Marya Zarif to write Dounia and the Princess of Aleppoa magnificent animated film that pays tribute to the courage of Syrian children.
Originally from Aleppo, Marya Zarif is a Syrian-Quebec director who has been championing the cause of Syrian children for a long time. His film brought me back to that day in September 2015 when the photo of little Alan Kurdi, 3 years old, who died on a beach in Turkey, put the Syrian tragedy in the headlines and shook our sleeping consciences.
That same evening, I had met Marya Zarif at a long-planned fundraising evening for Syrian children that coincidentally coincided with the death of little Alan. With a lump in her throat, with this sensitive sensitivity that is hers, she spoke in a very moving way to say that if the priority for the children of war was of course to survive, they also had to be able to be fair. children. Their need for dignity, which goes through school, games, music and dreams, was also an emergency.
In telling us the story of Dounia, a 6-year-old girl forced to flee her hometown of Aleppo under the bombs, Marya Zarif does not tell us so much about war as about life. Hope that persists despite everything, like a condemnation.
“At the end of these 12 years of war, with the earthquake that followed, disaster after disaster, what I observed above all among the Syrians and which touched me the most, was their extraordinary life force. “, tells me the filmmaker, whose close family still lives in Syria.
If it may seem a priori paradoxical to celebrate life when death is on the prowl, it is in fact quite the opposite, observes Marya Zarif, whose luminous film is an ode to Syrian culture made of poetry and secret spices, jam of rose petals and tenderness, string cheese and wisdom, coffee and marvelous tales.
“The very great darkness always coexists with a lot of light. People who have known how to cross the darkness are the people who most carry the true meaning of joy. It’s a lesson that I learned by going through very dark times myself in recent years, both personally and with regard to what was happening in Syria. »
First launched in Paris, the film, which is a Franco-Quebec co-production, was treated to rave reviews in the French press. But the comments that made Marya Zarif most happy came from Syrian viewers who saw the film, dubbed into Arabic, at a clandestine screening last week in Damascus.
“A 22-year-old said to me: ‘You can’t know how desperate we are. Everything is closed in front of us. But then I just looked Dounia and I wanted to go out dancing in the street.” And a 5-year-old child told his parents: “I’m going to write in my secret notebook that this is the best day of my life.” »
What also moved her a lot is that the film, while acting as a balm for many Syrians, also touched exiles from many countries encountered during screenings in Europe.
A lady from Sarajevo who was crying after a screening came to kiss me. Same for African ladies… There are plenty of people who have stories in their throats and who have felt that Dounia’s [qui veut dire « le monde » en arabe] also told them.
Marya Zarif, director of Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo
The animated feature, already presented in more than 20 festivals here and elsewhere and crowned with several awards, has also touched “pure wool” Quebecers, underlines its co-director. People who become attached to Jeddo Darwich and Téta Mouné, want to be part of the family and taste its cuisine, even if, unlike my children, they do not have an Aleppo grandmother who prepares maimounyeh for them – a delicious sweet semolina breakfast – every weekend.
This is not surprising insofar as, even if this film is primarily a love letter to Syrian men and women tested by a deadly conflict, it also tells a universal story that concerns those who exile only those who, sometimes at the other end of the world, open their arms to them. The author was also inspired – spoiler alert! – of the magnificent story of sponsorship of the small village with the big heart of Saint-Ubalde that I have already told in these pages1.
“It’s a film about the beauty of humans. On the courage, the resilience, the joy, the imagination which is stronger than anything and which manages to create life each time we go through hardships, ”summarizes Marya Zarif.
In short, a humanist cry, like an Aleppo broth for the soul.
Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo by Marya Zarif and André Kadi has been showing exclusively in cinemas since April 28.