EXCLUSIVE: Screen can reveal the first trailer for Syrian war documentary Little Sinner, ahead of its world premiere at CPH:DOX on Sunday, March 15, where it will compete in the main Dox:Award competition.

Directed by Daro Hansen and Thomas Papapetros and using material filmed over 20 years, Little Sinner follows Hansen’s experience of the Syrian war and ensuing refugee crisis.

As a student in Damascus, Syria, Hansen was coerced into a pro forma engagement to a Syrian man. She fell in love with a Danish exchange student and managed to escape the country; but the breakout of civil war in 2011 brought back repressed trauma and drew Hanson to the escalating refugee crisis.

The film is produced by Thor Hampus Bank for Denmark’s GotFat Productions, with backing from the Danish Film Institute, Danish Broadcasting Corporation, Western Danish Film Fund, AFAC and IMS.

Hansen is co-founder of Copenhagen’s Syrian Doc Days film festival; while Papapetros has worked as an editor, including on Sundance 2009 prizewinner Burma VJ.

“The film does not seek resolution, but honesty,” said Hansen. “My wish is to create a space where audiences can see themselves reflected—both in me and in the people I meet in the film—and hopefully inspire others to take a shorter path home to themselves than the one I have taken, by daring to ask the question: what is it that really hurts? And by daring to stay with the feeling.”

Topics