A café in Damascus. A young woman mingles with the customers. Suddenly she begins to tell her story. She was arrested arbitrarily at the start of the Syrian Revolution and was kept prisoner by the regime for years. Ever since the moment of her release, she has been going around the cafés, restaurants and bars of the Syrian capital to break the silence about the inhuman conditions in prison and the disappearance of thousands of women.

The Syrian actor, director and writer Lubna Abou Kheir lives in Zürich. Her short performance Damascus Café is a moving and poetic exploration of an invisible story.

Filmmaker and choreographer Eyas Almokdad examines the impact of war violence on intimate relationships. You see loved ones under constant pressure, or struggling with endless loss. Expect a universal story of how violence contaminates human connection.

A young couple’s relationship becomes troubled when a light starts shining through their living room window. This performance by the Polish writer Ireneusz Iredynski was adapted to fit the current Syrian context, and shows how people invent ways to escape from the chaos of war.