Berlin Film Festival: Abdallah Alkhatib’s Award-Winning Debut in CHRONICLES FROM THE SIEGE

Winner of the GWFF Best Feature Film Debut Award at the Berlinale, Chronicles From the Siege marks a striking arrival for filmmaker Abdallah Alkhatib, a work that refuses the simplicity of a single hero and instead captures the collective experience of survival under siege. Set within the claustrophobic reality of a city cut off from the world, the film follows an ensemble of ordinary people navigating starvation, fear, and moral dilemmas while clinging to fragments of daily life, friendship, intimacy, and even the fleeting comfort of a cigarette.

Built from interconnected stories rather than a traditional narrative arc, the film reflects the psychological and physical compression of life under siege, where boundaries between individuals dissolve and survival becomes a shared condition. Through moments of stillness and silence, Alkhatib reveals a form of violence that is slow and suffocating, one that attacks both body and memory. Even small gestures, cinephiles debating whether to burn cherished films to keep warm, become profound acts of resistance. 

Alkhatib speaks about the challenges of crafting an ensemble film under extreme constraints, the role of cinema as testimony, and why the act of remembering remains central to both filmmaking and survival.

AM: Chronicles from the Siege unfolds through interconnected stories rather than a single protagonist. What inspired you to tell this tale as an ensemble, and what does this structure reveal about life under siege?
Abdallah Alkhatib: The process of making this film was actually very complex. At the beginning, the idea was to create five completely separate short films. Each story was meant to stand on its own, with its own world and rhythm. But in the middle of the filmmaking process, I decided to reassemble everything into one feature-length film. I realized that the fragmentation itself carried meaning, yet bringing the stories together could create a stronger emotional and cinematic impact.

I had many stories from the siege, real memories, fragments of lives, moments of absurdity and tragedy. Narratively, it was very difficult to merge all these stories into one traditional dramatic arc with a single protagonist. The only honest way was through an ensemble structure. This structure reveals something essential about life under siege: how deeply interconnected people’s lives become. The siege I am speaking about took place in Palestinian refugee camps, very small, dense spaces where everyone knows everyone. Under siege, faces gradually disappear. The circle of people becomes smaller and smaller, until encounters become inevitable and almost ritualistic.

In that sense, daily life under siege starts to resemble prison life, you meet the same people every day, in the same confined space, under the same pressure. The ensemble form allowed me to reflect that reality: a community trapped together, where every action has consequences for others, and where survival is collective rather than individual.

AM: Many scenes are quiet, almost contemplative, even within moments of crisis. How do you think stillness and silence function in a film about siege and conflict?
Abdallah Alkhatib: Silence is essential when we want to go deeper with the characters. For me, stillness creates space, space for the audience not just to observe, but to feel, or at least to come closer to what the characters are experiencing internally. In moments of crisis, noise is expected. But what interests me more is what happens between the explosions, the waiting, the uncertainty, the exhaustion. Silence allows us to enter that psychological territory.

A siege is, in many ways, a silent weapon. It kills without always being visible. It does not resemble conventional war, which is defined by rockets and airplanes. The violence of siege is slower, quieter, more suffocating. It operates through deprivation, hunger, and time itself. Stillness in the film reflects that invisible pressure. It mirrors the way life shrinks, the way sound disappears, the way even hope can become fragile and muted. Silence becomes another form of tension.

AM: What was the most challenging moment in the production, finding the narrative voice, working with your ensemble cast, or capturing the emotional landscape of siege?
Abdallah Alkhatib: Everything was difficult, to be honest. The film was made under extremely limited financial conditions, we worked with less than ten percent of the real budget a project like this would normally require. That reality shaped every creative and logistical decision. Working with a large ensemble cast was also a major challenge. Giving each character enough space, ensuring every performance felt truthful and balanced, and maintaining coherence across multiple storylines is not easy. An ensemble film demands constant attention to rhythm and proportion. Not all the actors came from the same background. Some had never experienced war or siege firsthand. Part of the process became about building a shared emotional understanding, creating an atmosphere where the psychological weight of siege could be felt authentically, even by those who had not lived through it. 

Narratively, the structure was particularly complex. We were essentially making one film out of five distinct stories while also telling one larger story, the story of the siege itself. The challenge was ensuring that each fragment retained its integrity while contributing organically to a unified emotional and thematic arc. In the end, the difficulty was part of the process. The constraints, the fragmentation, and the collective effort mirrored the very reality the film portrays.

AM: The character of Arafat, a former filmmaker, carries the weight of art and memory. In what ways does filmmaking itself become an act of resistance or testimony within your work?
Abdallah Alkhatib: Cinema, in my view, is part of a process of resistance, but it is not resistance by itself. Historically, liberation movements have understood this clearly. For example, the Palestine Liberation Organization established a film unit alongside its intelligence, military, and media units. Cinema was treated as one component within a broader liberation project.
In that sense, it becomes significant, not because it replaces political or material struggle, but because it preserves narrative, memory, and perspective. Filmmaking becomes an act of testimony. It protects experiences from erasure. Under siege, one of the greatest threats is not only physical destruction, but the disappearance of memory, the loss of stories, faces, and voices.

The character of Arafat embodies that fragile memory. He represents a cultural and emotional archive that the siege is trying to erase. In that way, he becomes a symbol of the siege itself, wounded, exhausted, but refusing to vanish. Through him, cinema is not portrayed as heroic propaganda, but as something more intimate and stubborn: the insistence on remembering, even when everything else is collapsing.

AM: Finally, when audiences walk away from Chronicles from the Siege, what questions or feelings do you hope linger with them?
Abdallah Alkhatib: When audiences leave Chronicles From the Siege, I don’t expect one single emotion. It depends on where the film is screened and who is watching. In some places, I hope the film leaves anger. In others, solidarity. And in certain contexts, perhaps even a sense of shame.

More than anything, I hope it provokes questions, especially about responsibility. Not abstract responsibility, but concrete political responsibility. Who is accountable for what is happening to Palestinians today? What role do governments, institutions, and societies play? If the film lingers as discomfort, as a question that cannot be easily dismissed, then it has done something meaningful.