Dounia And The Princess of Aleppo (2022) A few nigella seeds tucked in the palm of her hand, 6-year-old Dounia leaves Syria with the Princess of Aleppo’s help and travels towards a new world.

Dounia – The Great White North (2024, UK premiere) is an animated winter special about how little Dounia, the Syrian girl now aged 7 years old, finds a new home and makes new friends in beautiful Canada, while hoping her dad will join her soon.

The creator and author of Dounia, Marya Zarif, was born and raised in Aleppo, Syria. She has lived in Canada for the past 15 years but remains very attached to her country of origin and the plight of Syrian refugees fleeing the war. “Like Dounia, because I come from Syria, I know that there is nothing more wonderful than a land where people, cultures, colours, languages and customs meet and mix. It has been Syria for millennia; it is the world of today. I gave birth to all those characters to give faces to all the migrants who have become numbers and whose humanity is forgotten. Dounia is a declaration of love to my people and a gift to those who open their arms to them,” she says.

André Kadi, who arrived in Canada in 2007 as a graphic novel author and a musician, joined Frima animation studios, where he stayed for over 11 years. At the head of the artistic department, he founded a branch of the studio in Bordeaux , and opened a 2D animation studio in 2012, where he made the series MaXi and Agent Jean in particular, before co- founding Du Coup Animation in 2018 with Marie-Michel le Laflamme, then Du Coup Production in 2021. A rigorous studio head who directs most of Du Coup’s projects, he co-directed Dounia in 2020 on behalf of Tobo, with Marya Zarif.

Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo is his first feature film.

Age recommendation: 6+
£6 (Free entry for under 16s)

Doors 1:30pm / Screening 2pm