Hasan Kattan has been announced as one of the first cohort of filmmakers supported by the Displacement Film Fund, for his film Allies in Exile co-directed by Fadi Al Halabi, produced by Grain Media, Co-Produced by Counterpoints Productions.
Announced at IFFR 2025, the pilot scheme awarded five short film production grants of €100,000 each to Maryna Er Gorbach (Ukraine), Mo Harawe (Somalia-Austria), Hasan Kattan (Syria), Mohammad Rasoulof (Iran) and Shahrbanoo Sadat (Afghanistan).
The resulting films world premiered at IFFR 2026 and received a five-star review from Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian: “By turns shocking, funny, confessional and deeply mysterious, this is a tremendous collection.”
For 14 years, Syrian filmmakers Hasan Kattan and Fadi Al-Halabi have journeyed together through war and storytelling. Their bond was forged on the frontlines of revolution where their cameras recorded terror and hope, laughter and heartbreak – moments that defined a generation.
Years later, their story takes an unexpected turn. Confined inside a UK asylum hotel, Hasan and Fadi document a new chapter shaped not by bombs, but by waiting, bureaucracy, and exile. Amid rising anti-refugee hostility, they turn the camera inward, exploring friendship and displacement and how filming itself becomes an act of survival when the future is so uncertain.