(Syria, 1999) explores deep human emotions with an intimate approach. Her films connect stories with emotions, allowing the viewer to empathize with the internal world of the characters, even without similar experiences.

Ik meer van jou (2023, short doc)
I Don’t Want to Say Goodbye (2022, short fiction)

The statement:
How can roots that have been violently uprooted take hold again in foreign soil?
How can you feel at home in a new country when the memory of your first encounter still aches?
And how can you grow new roots in a land that took part in the uprooting of your own?

Draw Me a Homeland takes you aboard a “lucky” refugee boat that arrives on the shores of European integration programs, a film about roots longing for soil to embrace them. Will they ever find it? Or is their longing, as refugees in this country, as fragile and distant as a dream?

From the denial of what happened to you, to the moment when the numbness begins to fade, you’re left waiting, surrounded by a sea of questions, endless paperwork, and a constant sense of not yet.

This film explores that no man’s land in between: not here, not there. The struggle to take root in new ground while the old soil still pulls you back and the new one keeps spitting you out. Integration often feels like something placed entirely on you: being reborn in a system where the pointing fingers hold the power to make you feel at home, yet choose not to.