Biography

Mohammed Ali Al-Atassi (محمد علي الأتاسي), born in 1967 in Damascus, Syria, is a Syrian journalist, human rights activist and documentary filmmaker.

He is the son of former Syrian President Noureddine al-Atassi. Atassi obtained a civil engineering degree from the University of Damascus in 1992 and a DEA in history from the Sorbonne Paris in 1996. After completing his studies in France, he returned to Syria in 1999. After working as an assistant research at the Sorbonne, he began writing for Arab and international newspapers on political and cultural subjects, in particular for the weekly cultural supplement Mulhaq of the Lebanese daily al-Nahar. Since 2001, he has directed four feature-length documentaries and produced several short and documentary films. His films have been screened at festivals around the world and won international awards. He is the founder of Bidayyat for Audio-Visual Arts (2012-2020).

In 2001, Atassi made his first documentary film "Ibn El-Am" (Cousin) about Syrian dissident Riad al-Turk and Turk's experience as a political prisoner for 18 years. In 2012, he made a second film about Turk, "Ibn Al Am Online", in which he explored Turk's position on the Syrian revolution. His 2010 documentary “Waiting for Abu Zayd” profiles Egyptian intellectual Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid, a pioneer of reformist ideas about Islam. His latest film "Our Terrible Country" is about the Syrian revolution transformed into war, the writer Yassin al-Haj Saleh and his journey into exile. He won the FID Marseille Grand Prix in 2014. In 2021, he released the documentary "Little Palestine, diary of a siege " (Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege).