World pre­miere of FREE ZONE by Jas­mine Alakari at DOK Leipzig

We are pleased to announce that the doc­u­men­tary FREE ZONE by Jas­mine Alakari will have its world pre­miere in the Ger­man Com­pe­ti­tion Doc­u­men­tary of the renowned DOK Leipzig Film Fes­ti­val. The invi­ta­tion is a spe­cial dis­tinc­tion for the film, which is Jas­mine Alakar­i’s grad­u­a­tion film at DFFB.

In Athens, the young Iran­ian activist Abtin Parsa occu­pies hous­es for refugees in the semi-autonomous neigh­bour­hood of Exarcheia. Marked by the trau­ma of his own per­se­cu­tion, he becomes a cen­tral fig­ure of the resis­tance. Myr­to, a Greek woman with whom he falls in love, urges him to con­front his anger. When a new right-wing gov­ern­ment comes to pow­er and sets out to “cleanse” the neigh­bour­hood, vio­lent mass evic­tions begin. Abtin declares war on the state.

FREE ZONE (D/​W: Jas­mine Alakari, DoP: Agnesh Pakoz­di, Ben Bern­hard, P: Jas­mine Alakari, Ben Bern­har­di) was made over the course of a year and sev­er­al encoun­ters. The film is not only the por­trait of a man who fights by all means for his rights, but also the direc­tor’s exam­i­na­tion of her own posi­tion: what right does she have to turn anoth­er per­son­’s suf­fer­ing into an image, while she can leave the place of events at any time? In this way, FREE ZONE also invites the audi­ence to ask what respon­si­bil­i­ty we bear when we watch.

The grad­u­a­tion film was pro­duced with­in the Leucht­stoff Ini­tia­tive and fund­ed by Medi­en­board Berlin-Bran­den­burg and Rund­funk Berlin-Bran­den­burg, in co-pro­duc­tion with Jas­mine Alakari and Agnesh Pakoz­di. Already in its devel­op­ment phase, the project won the Pitch Award at DOK.fest München 2020.

We con­grat­u­late every­one involved on this invi­ta­tion and wish the film a suc­cess­ful world pre­miere in Leipzig.