Twelve years in the making, REPUBLIC OF SILENCE bears witness to a tragedy on an epic scale, accompanied by an ever-expanding mosaic of fragile, deeply embedded moments from Diana El Jeiroudi’s life, beginning with the memory from the age of seven when her father gives her a camera, right up to the present day.

Sometimes the frame holds a definitive version of what is happening in the world around the filmmaker. And then it collapses. White letters emerge on a black screen to conjure her inner world in this cinematic memoir.

A formal and orderly life in Berlin competes with a life in Damascus that is perforated by dictatorship and dismantled by wars and international political corruption. El Jeiroudi takes solace in cinema, music, the serenity of dreams, and the daily solidarity of a durable and abiding love story.

I am not mute, but silent. I cannot see but I am not blind.

What do you do as a survivor? You either shut up or tell the whole story.

How to tell a whole story with a fragmented, and sometimes an unregistered memory? How does my silent inner world reflect that unspoken world, or echo an era of revolution, war, immigration, and world politics? How to negotiate in a world uninterested in negotiation?
As a filmmaker, words, sounds and images are delicate elements I deal with, I craft and I order. But how can I create a simple linear story, when I don’t have the luxury of simplicity.

So, here I am. I am the story, yet the teller. This is what is left of me and of the story, of how I bore witness and became involved, of how cinema has saved our sanity and probably our lives.

Diana is a Berlin-based independent film director, screenwriter, editor and producer. Her films encapsulate sociopolitical tensions and extend well over time and she's best known for her latest feature documentary REPUBLIC OF SILENCE (Venice 2021, Honorable Mention, Dok Leipzig International Competition 2021). As a producer, she’s most known for the award-winning documentary SILVERED WATER – SYRIA SELF-PORTRAIT by O. Mohamad & W. S. Bedirxan (Cannes 2014). She occasionally serves as a member of professional committees and juries, most notably The Cannes Film Festival Golden Eye Documentary Award, Sundance Documentary Program, AFAC and others.

Over the years, Diana supported several careers and talents and together with her partner Orwa Nyrabia, they have been awarded for their contribution in advancing the documentary film community and culture, notably through setting up the first documentary film festival in Syria DOX BOX and later as a support organisation in Berlin. Diana has been CEO of Proaction Film and No Nation Films since their establishment and she continues to work as an independent director, editor and screenwriter.

FILMOGRAPHY:
2021 - REPUBLIC OF SILENCE, Documentary
2012 - MORNING FEARS, NIGHT CHANTS, Documentary
2007 - DOLLS: A WOMAN FROM DAMASCUS, Documentary
2005 - THE POT, Documentary
2004 - GOOD MORNING DAMASCUS, Feature