The Other Side of the Sun - Tawfik Sabouni

A few years ago, the filmmaker Tawfik Sabouni was released from Saidnaya, the prison infamously known as "The Other Side of the Sun". In December 2024, in the wake of the fall of the Assad regime and the liberation of Syria’s prisons, he returns to this place of detention to confront and reclaim the memory of his captivity.

This documentary film does not seek to reopen old wounds, but to restore what systematic violence sought to erase: the voices, the stories and their humanity. Building on trust and collaboration, Sabouni invites four other survivors of Saidnaya to join him. Together, they return to the physical spaces of their imprisonment and engage in a meticulously constructed re-enactment of daily rituals, gestures and moments of survival.

Filmed inside the former prison, the re-enactment becomes a means of expressing what language alone cannot convey. With restraint, The Other Side of the Sun confronts the viewer with the indelible marks of imprisonment, creating a deeply unsettling and emotionally devastating experience. By giving a presence to those who have disappeared, the film bears witness on behalf of the families who are still searching for answers and contributes to Syria’s efforts to come to terms with the legacy of its prisons.

Tawfik Sabouni is a Belgian-Syrian filmmaker and screenwriter born in Damascus in 1989. Passionate about theatre and later cinema from his teenage years, he initially studied law, as there were no film schools in Syria. In 2011, during the Syrian revolution, he picked up a camera to document what the state wanted to erase. He was arrested and imprisoned in Saydnaya before fleeing the country. Arriving in Belgium in 2015, he enrolled at INSAS in Brussels, graduating with a degree in film directing in 2022. His short films Au bord de la folie (2021) and L’Apatride (2022) have been screened at international festivals.