Through their moving testimonies and the innovative use of 3D animations originally created by the regime to promote Marota City, Chapon offers a unique subversion of the propaganda images. As Chapon explains in the interview, the 3D visuals were repurposed not to illustrate a new utopia, but to invoke memory and imagination, allowing the witnesses’ stories to literally “haunt” the regime’s vision. The film’s aesthetic choices, such as focusing on the hands of the witnesses rather than their faces, further emphasize the deep emotional connections to their lost neighborhood.
Chapon shares the challenges he faced in the filmmaking process—from ensuring the safety of the witnesses to deciding which moments of their testimonies to include in the final cut. In his own words, the film became a “poetic act of defiance,” reclaiming space both physically and emotionally. With Al Basateen, Chapon not only offers a visual and emotional resistance to the erasure of history but also creates a cinematic space where memory, imagination, and the past can coexist, even in the face of destruction.
AM: Can you describe your creative preparation for the film, including your brainstorming process and research?
Antoine Chapon: My research primarily focused on the history of Basateen al-Razi, as well as the images and architectural plans of Marota City. In 2019, I accidentally came across 3D animations created by architecture firms linked to the Assad regime. These animations depicted an urban development project for the district they call Marota City. The images showed a smooth, clean, new, and silent neighborhood—devoid of protests, an urban landscape cleansed of the revolution.
My research examined how 3D animations were used as propaganda and as a means to attract foreign investors to rebuild the country. Gradually, I met Mahmoud, who played a crucial role in the film. He found people who had lived in the Basateen al-Razi neighborhood. Basateen al-Razi was a well-known district of Damascus, famous for its orchards—the most beautiful and oldest in the city. The regime razed all the century-old trees and replaced them with imported American palm trees. Where’s the logic in that?
These witnesses lost their homes; they were demolished before their very eyes. They were forcibly expropriated by the regime. Mahmoud and I conducted several interviews with five witnesses, but I kept only two for the film. With these two, I recorded about six hours of interviews before the actual filming. During the shoot, we gathered around nine hours of testimonies.
AM: What were some of the key challenges you faced during the filming process?
Antoine Chapon: I faced several challenges—not just during filming. First, I had to find the plans for Marota City in order to recreate its 3D model and subvert it in a poetic way. I wanted to accurately reconstruct the streets of Marota City so that Syrians could add revolutionary graffiti to the regime’s urban landscape and restore the erased orchard trees. Once we obtained the plans, we rebuilt the buildings of Marota City using only videos and images available online. It was a painstaking process.
The second challenge was, of course, finding former residents. I met some in the Lebanese mountains, in Germany, and in France. The third challenge was ensuring their safety by never revealing their identities. The regime had a habit of taking family members hostage if someone spoke out from abroad. I was extremely paranoid about protecting identities throughout the years. During the shoot, I was fortunate to work with Juliette, the director of photography, who was meticulous about never filming the witnesses’ faces. This was the film’s biggest constraint: protecting the identities of the two witnesses. It ultimately shaped the film’s aesthetic.
Juliette and I decided to film the witnesses only from behind, focusing on their hands. Hands are deeply expressive of identity. Western culture has long associated identity with the face—since ancient Greece, with its concept of prosopon (the mask). But hands tell a lot about who we are. Montaigne, in The Apology for Raymond Sebond, beautifully describes how hands communicate. I always had this text in my mind. That’s how the film was constructed—around voice and its emotions, and around the hands of the witnesses. The film presents two ways of speaking: the voice of testimony and the hands that act, point, and create.
The final challenge was editing. I had the privilege of working with Laura. With so many hours of testimonies recorded before and during filming, we had to condense everything into just a few minutes. This raised ethical and political questions: What should we keep? What should we highlight? Thanks to Wael’s translations of all the testimonies, we managed to select the most important moments for the film.
AM: Why did you decide to feature these two particular witnesses in the film?
Antoine Chapon: I chose these two witnesses because their families knew each other—they were like neighbors. Even though they hadn’t met before, I wanted to bring them together so they could reconnect and remember their old neighborhood.
I also chose them because they belong to different generations. Anas is in his thirties, while Basima is older. Basima built her home with her own hands alongside her husband. She carries an even stronger, more precise memory of the place—not just because of her age but because of her personal history.
I found it moving to bring together two former residents, from two different generations, who reunited in Paris for the film—to recall their trees, their homes, and to bear witness to the violence and horrors inflicted by the regime.
AM: The story touches on the struggles of the current generation in the region. Is there a specific message you hope to convey?
Antoine Chapon: I don’t have a direct message to convey about the situation in Syria. It’s up to Syrians to decide what future they want to build. I believe that future must be one without war, after all these years of horror. But of course, no one anticipated Bashar’s fall. He fled Damascus on the last day of our sound editing. I spent that week closely following the resistance’s advance—from the north (Aleppo, Idlib, Homs) and then from the south, as the Druze swiftly reached Damascus.
It’s hard to describe what I felt. Every hour, I refreshed the website tracking the resistance’s live positions. I was euphoric. Yet at the same time, it felt unreal—like a dream, like something impossible. The fact that it happened on the very last day of our sound editing, after five years of work, made it feel even more surreal.
AM: In light of the current changes in Syria, how does this impact your project?
Antoine Chapon: What it changes, above all, is the future of Syrians—the fact that they can finally return home and start imagining a future without dictatorship. Today, all 13 Syrians featured in the film have agreed to have their names listed in the credits. They finally feel safe.
AM: In your view, what makes documentaries powerful, and how can they be more impactful?
Antoine Chapon: I’m not sure I can speak about the power of documentaries in general—it depends on many factors. In the case of this film, its power lies in its ability to restore what Spinoza called potentia agendi—the capacity to act, which could be translated as empowerment. Bringing these former residents together, creating a space for speech and listening, a space of care—that in itself is a first step toward the power a documentary can hold.
The film’s hybridity is another way of enhancing the agency of Syrians. If the regime offers a project, images, a utopia, an illusion—the film proposes an alternative. That’s the essence of politics and utopia: offering a shared imaginary. Here, the 3D modeling and animation sequences present an alternative use of VFX. The VFX are not mere illustrations or illusions; they are a poetic and political approach—a stance against the regime’s imagery and a reinterpretation of the witnesses’ histories.
Al Basateen explores how the imagery of power (in this case, a regime) can be subverted to envision an imaginary future. Resistance in the film happens through testimonies, through the act of adding revolutionary graffiti to Marota City’s urban landscape, and through imagination. As Dunia al Dahan said to me: resistance in the end is an act of imagination—almost a form of science fiction. We imagine the trees returning. The erased century-old orchards reappear from the sky. VFX here serves a cause—it becomes a dreamlike act of defiance.
I simply wanted to counter the illusions created by the regime and architecture firms—the 3D renderings that sold the fantasy of a perfect, self-sufficient neighborhood. Basima often spoke about illusion and mirage. The question was: How do we offer another illusion, one that brings joy to the former residents? To counter the dictatorship’s illusion, I proposed another dream—one where Marota City is invaded by orchards that return like souls, like botanical ghosts haunting those who will live there. I followed Basima’s words: Those who live there will always smell the scent of blood.
The film’s final scene is a way of bringing back the trees, of reclaiming space—literally occupying the city with graffiti and orchards. During the revolution, people hid in the orchards to protect themselves from the regime’s gunfire. The trees and their fruits offered shelter. By reintroducing them into the imagery of power, the film poetically restores this space of protection. These trees become like ghosts—returning, haunting, and ultimately taking over the regime’s visual narrative. Occupy Marota City—with fruits, roots, and branches. In that sense, the film operates on two levels. It works through the act of listening to testimonies, and through the creation of a utopian space built by Syrians themselves. They take matters into their own hands—literally.
AM: What does representing your film at the Berlin Festival mean for your career and the broader industry?
Antoine Chapon: Berlin is a major festival. The Forum Expanded section is politically engaged, as evident in its film selections. That was reassuring to me—unlike other sections that have taken fewer risks, especially given what happened last year. There’s still a lingering fear of taking a stand, despite efforts from artists like Nan Goldin to push boundaries in Berlin a few months ago.
I have no particular expectations from Berlin. What mattered to me was its large Syrian community, which made sense for this film in a way that other festivals didn’t. I was fortunate to meet Syrians from Damascus after the screenings, and many were deeply moved by the film. The encounter with the audience in Berlin was truly meaningful and special. One of Berlin’s strengths is that films are seen by the city’s residents, not just industry professionals, unlike in some other festivals.