I WAS A STRANGER
2022 · Director: Brandt Anderson
Production Designer: Julie Berghoff
Philistine Film - Amman, Jordan
SUPERVISING ART DIRECTOR
Syria, present day. An explosion in Aleppo triggers a chain of events connecting five families across four continents. Each caught in the devastating human cost of the refugee crisis. Winner of the Amnesty International Film Award at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival.
Cast: Omar Sy, Yasmine Al Massri, Yahya Mahayni, Ziad Bakri.
✦ From the set: The reconstruction was so convincing that local residents began to believe a real explosion had occurred.
The set had to be explained to the neighbourhood.
A residential building in central Amman was dismantled and entirely rebuilt on a new location — transformed into a bombed-out ruin with rubble, debris and destroyed vehicles. The complete build was delivered in one month. The set was dressed to the standard required by a film shot with real Syrian refugees as extras, directed by an activist who had spent years documenting the crisis on the ground.
