In “700 Days in Homs,” directed by Suleiman Tadmori and Ali Hakim, a film student trapped by Syrian government forces in the besieged city of Homs tries to find his way out.
The project is currently in development at Hakim + König Film in Germany, and Hakim will be heading to Match Me!, the prestigious networking platform in Locarno for emerging producers which will take place from August 9-11.
“700 Days in Homs,” produced by Epic Film, is inspired by a real-life Palmyran struggle to survive in a war-torn city. “I have lived through the constant horror of bombardment in Homs, where fear and destruction were present everywhere,” he said in a statement. “700 Days in Homs captures the profound resilience and solidarity of young residents amidst the chaos, shifting the narrative from despair to hope. Aiming to amplify their voices and inspire global awareness, this film is a testament to the relentless spirit of the Syrian people.”
Tadmori, a journalist-turned-filmmaker, will co-write and direct the film in collaboration with Hakim, whose first feature, Bonnie & Bonnie, premiered at the Hamburg Film Festival in 2019. The war drama is at the forefront of development at Hakim + Koenig Film, a startup production company founded by Hakim and Max Koenig (“WaPo Bodensee”) that aims to tap into the “pop art” sector in Germany and internationally.
Talk to diverse Before Match Me! premiered, Hakim said he wanted to work on art films “but to find a big audience for them.” “We don’t want to make films for thousands of people in cinemas. We want to be in a big cinema complex with our films. That’s our unique selling point. It’s also important for us to have diverse, global stories and not have projects that only work in Germany, which is a smaller market with fewer funding opportunities.”
This desire to produce films with broad appeal has led Hakim to focus on 700 Days in Homs amid the company’s growing development portfolio. “The challenge for us is to find something that touches people and is also entertaining. People want more than superhero stories, and with a good team and a good story, you can still entertain people with an art film.”
Hakim is currently working on a second draft of the script for 700 Days in Homs, and cites major American films like Marc Webb’s 500 Days of Summer and Christopher Nolan’s Memento as key inspirations for the film. “We thought of 500 Days of Summer because of the unconventional way the story is told,” he says. “When I first heard Suleiman tell his story, he was moving from the future to the past, from one point to another in a non-linear way because that’s how the human brain works. I want to replicate that in our film and also have something a little more daring, like Nolan did with Memento.”
Afghan-German filmmaker Hakim is one of 36 young producers selected for the 10th edition of Match Me! Commenting on his expectations ahead of the initiative, the producer says that getting funding is not a priority for him when he is in Switzerland. “I think long-term so that I can build relationships with people who know they can trust me in the future. I want to learn from more experienced producers and understand how they manage to launch projects in other countries. How do people finance their films? How do they deal with new technologies?”
Technology is a topic of great importance to the producer, who is quick to point out how useful AI is throughout his creative process. “The first thing I do before writing any project is create a poster. I want to imagine the film being shown in a cinema. Then I start listening to music and building images using AI from certain references. I’m a very visual writer.”
“Before I fight new technology, I try to think about how I can use it to improve my stories,” the producer says when asked about the controversy surrounding the use of AI in filmmaking. “When I write a script, it usually takes me four days to work on analyzing it. Chat GPT can do it in two hours.”
“We are also thinking about AI dubbing and AI subtitles. I will be attending a conference on AI subtitles in Berlin in September, and this will greatly expand our scope. We are thinking internationally here,” he added.
700 days in Homs
Image generated by AI (courtesy of Hakim + König Film)
