Trailer for The Shebabs or Yarmouk.
In this spirited, staunchly humanistic film we follow five youths, Palestinian refugees living in the 50-year-old camp of Yarmouk in Syria, where rooms are left to leak and living quarters stack shoddily one upon the other. For these third-generation refugees on the cusp of adulthood, a place to call home eludes them—but they yearn for it just the same. “We’ve never seen our home country, we’re dreaming of it,” opines one woman. Filming over three years, Axel Salvatori-Sinz intimately lensed the lives and unshakable bonds of friendship formed in the camp, the dashed aspirations, the ceaseless frustrations born of sanctions. Dotted with quieter, ruminative moments of youthful listlessness, convivial card games and afternoon tea on balmy rooftops, The Shababs of Yarmouk finds vibrancy and grace among hardship. As one man wonderfully proffers, “When fate’s your foe, decide to laugh rather than cry!”