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- Country of residence: Netherlands
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After obtaining Dutch citizenship, Palestinian refugee director Abdo Al-Assadi was able to finally realize the dream of an incomplete return to his city of Safed with his two daughters, drawing inspiration from his short film (Red Passport), which was recently shown at the “Palestine Film Days” festival in Ramallah and was also shown at the “Majdalani Hall.” “In Haifa and other locations, Abdo Al-Asadi is the son of a family that was displaced from the Galilean city of Safed during the Nakba in 1948 to the Palestinian refugee camps in Syria. He was born there and suffered with his family members all forms of suffering and endured all forms, types and bitterness of asylum. What is the biography of the Palestinian director Abdo Al-Asadi? What is the motivation for his film Red Passport?
Abdo Al-Asadi
The Palestinian writer and director Abdo bin Abdel Salam Al-Asadi was born in the Salhiya neighborhood on Mount Qasioun in Damascus, on July 25, 1965, to refugee parents from the city of Safed in northern occupied Palestine. He obtained a bachelor's degree from the College of Information and Journalism in 1990, and worked as a full-time researcher at the Center for Palestine Studies, and then at the Land Foundation for Palestine Studies.
He wrote in the Arab and Palestinian press, and published research in specialized journals (Al-Ard - Samed Al-Eqtisadi - Arab Affairs - and others...). He wrote articles in Arab and Palestinian newspapers (Al-Safir, Al-Hayat, Al-Nahar, Al-Mustaqbal, Tishreen...); He published many research books, including: Post-Zionism/A Critical Approach (Center for Strategic Studies, Research and Documentation - Beirut 2001); Palestinian Resistance Press 1965 - 1995 (Dar Al-Numair - Damascus 1998); Revealing the Available (Conversations with Elias Shoufani - in collaboration with Mustafa Al-Wali) (Dar Al-Hasad - Damascus 2001); A study of Naji Al-Ali’s creativity (in collaboration with Kholoud Tadmuri) (Dar Al-Kunoz Al-Adabiya - 1994); He worked as editor-in-chief (producer) for a number of Arab and Palestinian television stations.
He left Syria after the outbreak of the revolution, in the last quarter of 2014. He learned of asylum after half a century of a life he spent in Syria, and he felt the bitterness of the first asylum of his parents and siblings, following the Nakba of Palestine, so he used to say sarcastically: I was born a refugee without ever being a refugee, and I bequeathed asylum to my daughters. I became a refugee for the second time, but there was a difference between the first and the second asylum. The first created a resistance identity for the Palestinians , while the second made us feel humiliated and broken.
He, like other Palestine refugees in Syria, risked his life to obtain a decent life opportunity for his three daughters and his wife. He settled in the Netherlands, which granted him Dutch citizenship, and he became, in the legal sense, a Dutch citizen. But he always said about himself: “His soul was torn apart between Palestine.” “And Syria and exile.” He worked for Dutch television (Rtv-NH) as a reporter on Syrian refugees, and prepared a documentary film about the working conditions of Syrian refugees with advanced degrees from June 2017 until January 2020. He wrote on many websites, and
settled In this position, he directly supervises the “Palestine Forum” website, and prepares political and intellectual (video) dialogues with Palestinian thinkers and philosophers that address Palestinian concerns. He worked as a volunteer in many Dutch organizations to prepare reports that address the concerns of refugees in general, and Arabs in particular. He directed his film (Red Passport) during the current year 2022.
The film Red Passport summarizes the complex concerns of a Palestinian refugee, during which he yearns to return to the land of his fathers and grandfathers, and here they are embodied in the Galilean city of Safed, the city from which the writer and director Abdo Al-Asadi hails. After he and his family obtained Dutch citizenship, he was able to visit the only homeland, Palestine, in 2019. He and his daughter visited several cities, most notably the city of Safad, where he was born in the care of his parents, is devoid of its original people who migrated to Syria and other nearby and far migrants, but the scent of the city is still strongly present, waiting for the return of the family and their descendants to complete the picture of a homeland that was stolen by force of arms for the bats of the night to tamper with.
After his first visit with his two daughters, Al-Asadi decided to make his film (Red Passport) after he and his daughter Yara took many pictures in several Palestinian cities, which were the important raw material. The film carries within it complex messages through documenting with images moving around the various corners of the Palestinian homeland and sending complex messages to the viewer, affirming that the Palestinian people deserve to live in the homeland of their ancestors, Palestine. Regardless of the arrangement of Al-Asadi’s film, it has become established through it and like the rest of the products of the Palestinian people in the fields of cinema and theater . Thought and art have established an essential pillar of the national identity, and no right has been lost behind it are demands. In this sense, the Palestinian national identity will remain rooted and in constant development and is not in danger due to the activity of the Palestinian people and their productions in all fields of life, including the film Red Passport by the writer and director Abdo Al-Asadi.
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