Abdallah Al-Khatib

EARLY LIFE

Abdallah Al-Khatib was born in 1989 in Yarmouk, the large Palestinian refugee camp and neighborhood on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria. He grew up in the camp, which was home to tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees. He studied sociology at the University of Damascus. Before the escalation of the Syrian uprising, he worked with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) as a coordinator of youth activities and volunteers in Yarmouk. With friends, he co-founded the humanitarian organization Wataad, which carried out numerous relief and development projects across Syria, particularly in the besieged camp. From a young age he was involved in human-rights and community work, including earlier volunteering with SOS Children’s Villages and co-founding initiatives focused on Palestinian refugees in Syria.

CAREER

Al-Khatib’s entry into filmmaking was closely tied to the siege of Yarmouk. Between 2011 and 2015, he and friends recorded extensive footage of everyday survival—hunger, community resilience, protests, music, education, and loss. This material became the foundation of his debut feature documentary, Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege (2021). The film premiered at Visions du Réel (where it received the Interreligious Award), screened in the ACID program at Cannes, and appeared at numerous international festivals including Yamagata, Torino, and others. It offers a first-hand, intimate portrait of life under siege and has been widely recognized for its historical and emotional value. He then moved into fiction with the short film Sokrania 59 (2023). His first full-length fiction feature, Chronicles from the Siege (2026), premiered in the Perspectives section of the 76th Berlin International Film Festival and won the GWFF Best First Feature Award. The film draws on his experiences of siege, presenting interconnected stories of ordinary people confronting impossible choices in a war-isolated city. He also appears in a small role (Cigarette Thief) in the film. Earlier, he contributed as a cameraman to the documentary 194. Us Children of the Camp (which premiered at Visions du Réel in 2017).

PERSONAL LIFE

Al-Khatib identifies as Palestinian-Syrian. During the Syrian conflict and the prolonged siege of Yarmouk (beginning around 2013), he documented daily life under bombardment, starvation, and isolation. He remained in the camp until his expulsion by ISIS (Daesh) in 2015. He faced significant personal risks, including threats, and his family was also affected by the conflict. Since around 2019 he has lived in Germany, where he was granted refugee status. He continues his studies in social sciences there while working as a filmmaker and public speaker on issues of displacement, siege, and human rights.

Al-Khatib is an outspoken human-rights defender. In 2014, Greenpeace Germany named him Peacemaker of the Year. In 2016 he received the Swedish Per Anger Prize for Human Rights for his non-violent activism and documentation work. He has written on social and political issues and continues to speak publicly about the experiences of Palestinian refugees and civilians under siege. His films are marked by a commitment to witnessing and preserving the complexity of human life amid extreme violence and deprivation.