The MENA Prison Forum (MPF) and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation are glad to invite you to the screening of TADMOR, directed by Monika Borgmann and Lokman Slim.
« TADMOR is not only the best political film of this film-fest,
it is also one of the most impressive, astute and courageous films that we have seen in the last years. »
Jury of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung | Best Political Film Award @ 2016 Filmfest Hamburg
One year after the 2012 Syrian uprising, eight Lebanese political prisoners decide to break their silence about the long years they spent in Tadmor prison (Palmyra), the Assad regime's worst torture dungeon. Since words alone are insufficient to describe the cruelty, suffering, contempt, and fear they survived, they decide to relive their torment together. Tadmor is the story of their will to live.
2016, Language: Arabic (Subtitles: English)
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When I was in Tadmor Prison, I thought my life had ended… Fear, sickness, defeat… Humiliation upon humiliation upon humiliation… Words cannot describe the brutality I experienced… Life had passed me by… But we returned from hell… Freedom is as precious as the soul… To the prisoners who are still suffering: May God get you out of there…
These were the words we heard in 2012, when we started our research for the film TADMOR. These were the words used to describe Tadmor Prison by a group of men who survived its horrors. Tadmor had just one purpose: the complete physical and psychological destruction of its inmates.
Ali. Saad. Moussa. Raymond. Moustafa. Rashid. Elias. Camille. Marwan. Jamal. Jamil. Yahya. Darwish. Ali. Jalal. Saeb. Houssein. Mohammad. Fouad. Ibrahim. Mahmoud. Ali. Sons, husbands, friends, fathers, lovers, all of them had rich lives before their arbitrary incarceration in Assad’s Syrian prisons. All of them survived. Thousands of others did not…
How to make a film about such a carceral system and about the rawest of emotions, such as fear, terror, hate, disgust, shame, pain, weakness, helplessness, boredom, resistance, hope and strength? The answer came from them, the survivors themselves. In TADMOR, they guided us and we followed.
In an extraordinary endeavor of collaboration and trust, built on a years-long and enduring relationship, the men were ready to confront—together—their common past.
Words alone could not describe the cruelty of their detention. Words alone could not exorcise that horrendous past. Ultimately, the men chose to reenact it. They wanted to relive it.
Together, we searched for a place they could use to rebuild their isolation and collective cells. Together, we created the scenes they would reenact. Together, we prepared each phase in the filming.
In TADMOR, twenty-two men recall their individual and collective stories of torture and survival. They speak for themselves, but also for those who are still trying to survive the same systematic torture and humiliation.
The MENA Prison Forum (MPF) is an interdisciplinary initiative. Launched in 2018, it is dedicated to researching prison culture in the MENA region. The project engages a collaborative international network that includes former prisoners, filmmakers, academics and activists from various countries to address carcerality around the region.
With the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, images of freed detainees from Syria’s gruesome prisons flooded our screens. The present moment is a crucial one to shed the light on the inner workings of this intricate system and to explore the traumatic experiences of those who were held and tortured by it.
