Directed by Tawfiq Sabouni, Belgium / France / Saudi Arabia, 2025

92 minutes, Arabic with English subtitles 

As part of the side program accompanying the exhibition Sednaya: Syria’s Architecture of Repression and Death, we are pleased to invite you to the screening of the documentary The Other Side of the Sun.

Since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, public attention to Syria’s detention system has intensified. Survivors have returned to former prisons, testimonies have circulated widely online, and Arabic-language television channels have produced investigative reports on prisons, torture sites and notably, the ongoing search for the disappeared. 

One of the first films to emerge from this new context is “The Other Side of the Sun” (2025) by Brussels-based filmmaker Tawfik Sabouni. Years ago, Sabouni was released from Sednaya, the infamous Syrian prison also known as “the other side of the sun.” In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Assad’s regime and the liberation of Syria’s prisons in December 2024, he returned to this site of detention to confront and reclaim the memory of his captivity.

This film does not seek to reopen wounds, but to restore what systematic violence tried to erase: voices, stories, and humanity. Built on trust and collaboration, Sabouni invites four fellow survivors of Sednaya to join him. Together, they return to the physical spaces of their imprisonment and engage in a carefully constructed reenactment of daily rituals, gestures, and moments of survival.

Filmed inside the former prison, reenactment becomes a means to express what language alone cannot. With sensitivity and restraint, “The Other Side of the Sun” confronts the viewer with the enduring scars of imprisonment, creating an experience that is profoundly unsettling and emotionally devastating. By restoring presence to those who were disappeared, the film bears witness to the suffering of survivors and to the families still searching for answers amid Syria’s ongoing reckoning with the legacy of its prisons.

The screening will be followed by an Q&A session in Arabic and English with Tawfik Sabouni.

Date & Time: 14 September 2026 | 8:00 PM

Location: Kulturbrauerei, Schönhauser Allee 36, 10435 Berlin – Prenzlauer Berg

The event is being held in cooperation with Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, medico international, Prisons Museum, and the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial. 

Entrance is free, please confirm your presence by mail: [email protected]