Director - Writer - Linguist Derky Shahi

Sons of Life

Being in a newly-established Syrian school in Turkey in 2013-2014 has been a unique experience that up until now I think about it and want to create a feature film about that setting. When many Syrians had to leave the country around the same period, new things were being created, a new environment in which especially its newness is the richest part of it. How in the southern city of Mersin, a residential building was granted for Syrians to establish a school that taught the Libyan curriculum (for the Arabic language and for not using the Syrian curriculum for political reasons), I had the chance to move from my early teenage years in Damascus where I was dreaming about a change in the system and was full of hope, to my mid-teenage years in Mersin where the hope has taken other forms and I’m faced with people from all over Syria that I would’ve never met if it weren’t for leaving the country. The school was more of a community than it was a school. I hold this project close to my heart, making this film more for Syrians to see themselves in rather than making it for educational purposes.