Born 1975 in Homs, Syria, Khaled lives as an artist, photographer and filmmaker in Leipzig. Since 2011 he has realised numerous video art works as well as experimental documentaries, which have been shown worldwide at festivals as well as in art contexts, and some of which have received multiple awards. His videos Bullet (2011), TUJ (2012) and Slot in Memory (2013) have been shown a.o. at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Berlin Art Biennale and on ARTE. Since 2015 he has been collaborating with the Berlin based production platform pong film. In 2016, his first feature-length film Jellyfish, about the Syrian civil war was invited to the Berlinale Forum. His current works include the short film Backyard (2018), the feature-length documentary film Purple Sea (2020) by Amel Alzakout, which Khaled co-directed, and his own second feature-length film Background (2023).
Background
Background
Background
A Syrian filmmaker in Leipzig reconstructs his father's journey, arriving in the GDR as an exchange student in 1956. The son applies for asylum more than 60 years later as a refugee. The civil war in Syria separates their stories, the film brings them back together and continues them.
'I've become haunted by my father's story in the GDR 60 years ago, trying to imagine him here, thinking of the differences in time, circumstances, politics, relations, what is left, and what changed. I kept searching for his places and possible traces, taking photos and notes. His language school, a barbershop, an opera, the university, archives, camera, river…. In my studio, I treat a few old photographs of my father. Cut his young figure, retouch, and paste it in new locations creating new photos. Background film is my attempt to reconstruct and adapt memory, deal with the loss, learn more about my new home, its present and past, claim and rewrite a personal history, and establish a meeting point between two eras, stories, father and son in the cinema space.' - Khaled ABDULWAHED
