SOAP OPERA PRODUCTION IN SYRIA

“SYRIAN SOAP OPERA PRODUCTION” was an assignment by GEO Germany in 2010. Since 2011 the only images from Syria we are seeing are of either traumatised refugees, war or the bloodthirsty terrorists. As I live in Istanbul and do a lot of voluntary work helping refugees who live in Turkey I often talk to people from Syria who want to go back to their ordinary lives and who also wish Syria to be remembered as a normal country with normal people who simply lived a normal life. It was not a country of war mongering religious extremists. In Europe the stigma that comes with the word “refugee” is even worse than in Turkey. With this story I would like to remind us that Syrian people are people like you and me, who deserve to live a normal live again. Ramadan, the Islamic fasting month, is tv time. Only for Ramadan more than 100 new series are produced, about 40 of them in Syria. The best and most loved ones are turned into a pan-Arab event, full of dreams, traumata, hope and insults. Bab al-Hara "The Neighbourhood's Gate" is one of the most popular television series in the Arab world, watched by tens of millions of people from the nice villa in Saudi Arabia to poor informal areas in Cairo, from villages in Morocco to Arab immigrants in Berlin. The appeal is cross-generational, and viewers include Muslims, Christians, Druze and Jews from Arab countries. But not all soap operas are conservative. Many directors are trying to tackle topics of modern society like AIDS, homosexuality, corruption and religious hypocrisy. Director Firaz Dehni, who studied film at the renowned university of film in Potsdam, Germany, directed controversial productions. For Ramadan in 2010 he directed Sabaya or “Girls” about five unmarried young women living together in a flat share. Especially young viewers can relate to Sabaya as much of the content is very familiar, the mainly young population of Syria is yearning for a more independent lifestyle.