Gotthard Zug cinema – Film: Little Sero and his neighbors

With «Neighbors», the Fliz Filmclub Zug presents a moving feature film that takes us back to a time when today’s Syria tragedy began. Everything from a child’s point of view.

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6-year-old Sero lives with his Kurdish family in a northern Syrian village right on the Turkish border. When the Assad regime put more and more pressure on minorities in the 1980s, the situation for the Kurds in the north of the country became even more uncomfortable. Families have been torn apart by the demarcation. On the Turkish side they want to “Turkize” them, on the Syrian side they want to “Arabize”. The situation is particularly dire for the Zionist Kurds. In Sero’s neighborhood lives such a family, which he perceives as very endearing. However, the political situation is becoming more and more threatening for them.

It gets really oppressive when a new teacher comes to the village, who drums his raging hatred of Jews and his Arab-nationalist sentiments into the children. To make matters worse for the internally torn Sero, he does not speak Arabic and is confronted with the teacher’s anti-Semitic actions on a daily basis. Why should he hate and want to kill his neighbors when they are so good and blameless? A tragic turning point in the child’s life comes when his mother is accidentally shot by Turkish border guards.

Personal flashback

The story is to be understood as a personal, autobiographical flashback by director Mano Khalil, who in his film Neighbors deals with his own childhood in northern Syria. He takes himself and the audience back to the time when reprisals, militarism and the persecution of minorities began under the Assad regime. Today we know only too well where the journey of this country has taken us.

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Mano Khalil, who now lives in Bern, made a conscious decision not to trace his childhood years in the form of a documentary, but with a two-hour feature film. He tells his story in an impressive and authentic way – initially from the point of view of the child he was. Although Khalil lets cheerful humor flow in at several points, with which he wants to emphasize, among other things, that even in a terrible world like this, children have plenty of ideas in their impartiality, the film leaves behind a basic feeling of dismay and helplessness in the face of so many human chasms. And in the middle of this social misery there is a sweet, innocent child with all his dreams.

The director succeeds in creating an atmospheric, sensitive cinematic masterpiece that vividly draws a link to the current Syrian tragedy and touches the soul deeply. The film also scores with the impressive acting performance of the protagonists. Khalil’s feature film was nominated for the Prix de Soleure in 2021.

The Fliz Filmclub Zug shows “Neighbors” on Monday February 14th at 8 p.m. in the Gotthard cinema. Director Mano Khalil is a guest and is available to answer questions from the audience. www.fliz.ch