BACK
SYNOPSIS
A chase, footsteps closing in; as you approach your house, it moves further away. This is a recurring nightmare, shared by many Syrians who have fled their homeland. At night they find themselves back in their hometowns, running, chased by invisible men. They’re looking for a safe place they can never reach. BACK dives into this nightmare to examine where it stems from. Did the trauma start at the protests against Bashar al-Assad, like it did for director Yazan Rabee? Or do we have to go back further to the terror during the reign of Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad?
CREW
Director: Yazan Rabee
Writer: Yazan Rabee
Producer : Laura Verduijn, Eefje Blankevoort, Sacha Gertsik & Philippe Avendano Vera
Syrian Arab Republic
Yazan Rabee
Yazan Rabee (1994) was born in Syria and fled to the Netherlands in 2016, with the singular goal to become a filmmaker. He had no plan B. Six years later he graduated from film school and went on to release two short films nearly simultaneously: fiction short Beyond the Sun, about the brainwashing program of the Syrian regime, and BACK, an introspective documentary about a recurring nightmare shared by many Syrians who have fled their homeland. In his work, which spans the range from fiction to documentary and often intertwines the two, he chooses to focus on mentally and socially damaged persons, often drawing from his own memories and dreams.
