In her first feature documentary film, Haunted (Maskoon), Syrian director Liwaa Yazji explores what it means to flee a war.

Yazji meets friends and people previously unknown to her at their homes. Domiciles where they live now, or where they are yet to live. Spaces that have turned into a sought-after commodity.

When the bombs arrive, their first instinct is to run away. Later, they remember that they didn’t turn back to capture their last memories of what they were leaving behind. They did not bid farewell to their homes, memories, photographs and identity of a life passed. Haunted is about the Syrian people’s relationship with their homes during the war. What is a home – in a physical and in a metaphorical sense? And how, if one dare ask, do they feel when they are forced to leave?

This screening accompanies Imagined Futures, the first UK solo show by internationally exhibited artist Hrair Sarkissian, and aims to shed further light on issues raised by the works in the show.

Liwaa Yazji is a theatre graduate from Syria. She has acted in September Rain (2009) by Syrian director Abdullatif Abdulhamid and has worked as an assistant director in Windows of the Soul (2011), a docudrama directed by Allyth Hajjo and Ammar Alani. She also wrote the screenplay of the TV drama series The Brothers (2013). Haunted is her first documentary film as a director.

112 min || Arabic with English subtitles

TICKETS: £6.50 online (no booking fee), £7.50 on the door