"Ayouni", the documentary that gives a face to the forced disappeared from Syria

"I don't know if he's alive. I can't be sure he's dead. Until I see his body, I won't be able to grieve." Noura Ghazi learned, in August 2017, of the execution of her husband Bassel Khartabil Safadi, five years after his arrest in Damascus and two years after his disappearance. But she does not know more. Neither where, nor when, nor how: "With a pistol? Day or night?".

For years, this 38-year-old Syrian lawyer, human rights activist, has been moving heaven and earth, all over the world, to get answers and recover the "most basic right to say 'goodbye' her husband".

Noura Ghazi shares the questions that haunt her in "Ayouni", the last documentary by Yasmin Fedda which will be released in streaming on July 1. The Palestinian director, winner of a Bafta [British equivalent of the Caesars] and author of several films on Syria, where she spent her childhood, filmed Noura Ghazi in her quest for the absent. She also followed Immacolata - known as "Machi", the father's father Paolo Dall'Oglio. This Italian priest, who founded in the 1980s the Syriac Catholic monastery of Mar Mûsa, north of Damascus, was kidnapped in Raqqa on July 27, 2013 by the Islamic State organization. He has since gone missing.

Like Bassel and Paolo, around 100,000 people have disappeared in Syria, according to Amnesty International, after being arrested by Bashar al-Assad’s regime or kidnapped by various armed groups, including the Islamic State organization, since the start of the Syrian conflict. in 2011.

An author's film on the complexity of emotions

For six years, Yasmin Fedda filmed these two women who did not know each other but were brought together by a common drama. "I had started a project on Father Dall'Oglio, who was a friend, when we learned of his abduction. My film then took another turn," said the director to France 24. From Iraq to Italy, via Lebanon and the United Kingdom, she collected their confidences, their tears, their questions and filmed their fight for truth and justice.

"I tried to capture the complexity of their emotions. In six years, there have been different phases, ranging from anger to hope, but the search for the truth has always kept them standing," said Yasmin Fedda. As Machi told his brother's kidnappers in a video posted in 2014: "We hope to hug Paolo in our arms but we are ready to mourn his death".

Neither a journalistic investigation - even if the facts are verified - nor a campaign film for human rights, even if "Ayouni" is supported by Amnesty International and the pro-democracy NGO The Syria Campaign, the documentary by Yasmin Fedda is an author film. A documentary that gives food for thought about war crimes through intimate stories. "It is not only a film about Syria and the war strategy of enforced disappearances, it is also a film which touches on universal feelings", analyzes Yasmin Fedda.

The "married of the revolution"

"'Ayouni' means eyes in Arabic", translates Yasmin Fedda. "But it is also a term of affection that we address to the people we love. We can therefore give it a double reading: either what people see, or a testimony to love."

The one that unites Noura and Bassel, "the newlyweds of the revolution". The couple met in 2011 during a demonstration in Douma against the power of Bashar al-Assad. Thanks to the video archives, Yasmin presents Bassel, a Palestinian-Syrian activist who played a leading role in the free Internet movement, notably by creating Arabic versions of Wikipedia and the Internet browser Firefox. "I wanted to make it present before filming the absence," says the director.

The couple got engaged in 2011, before the revolution turned to war. If the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, already orders his armies to shoot the demonstrators, Noura and Bassel still believe in change. "We have come such a long way," they say in an archive. But in March 2012, Bassel Khartabil Safadi was arrested by the regime. The engaged couple got married in Adra prison on January 7, 2013, hiding from the guards. Bassel then disappeared from radar in 2015, the year he was allegedly executed. Would have, a conditional with which Noura must learn to live, but which she tries to raise relentlessly for almost five years.

Advocacy against violations in Syria

Activist lawyer and founder of the NGO Nophotozone, which provides legal assistance to the families of forced disappeared, Noura Ghazi has become the voice of the tens of thousands of Syrian families who have seen their loved one disappeared at the hands of the government or various groups armed. On June 16, 2020, Noura again pleaded their case before the United Nations Security Council, at the invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron.

"I am here to speak to you about the suffering of the families of the enforced disappeared, most of whom are men, leaving us, women, to raise children without a father," she said in a videoconference. "I am here to speak to you about the violations of Bashar al-Assad who flouts our laws and our Constitution. [...] I am here to speak to you about the lack of political will to put an end to it. I demand justice and I I’m ready for that, to pay the high price. " 

A plea which Yasmin Fedda takes over in his documentary with a generous and empathetic look. "I would be happy if my film made a modest contribution to publicizing their struggle," she concludes.

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