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Liwaa Yazji
Liwaa Yazji, alternative spelling Liwaa Yazaji, (Arabic: لواء يازجي, born 1977 in Moscow, Soviet Union) is a Syrian filmmaker, playwright, TV screenwriter, dramaturge and poet. Her works, written in Arabic, have been translated into English and presented in the United Kingdom, the US and, in original Arabic versions, in Arab states.
Yazji was born to Syrian parents Haidar Yazaji (1946–2014), an artist, and Salwa Abdullah, who is a gynecologist and served as Minister of Social Affairs and Labour in the Syrian government from 2020 to 2021.[citation needed] Liwaa Yazji spent her early childhood years in Moscow, where her parents were completing their academic studies. The family returned to Syria in the early 1980s and stayed in the city of Aleppo for some years, before they moved to Damascus, where she finished her elementary, preparatory and secondary schooling. She then studied English Literature at Damascus University (1995–1998), and did her postgraduate diploma in Literary Studies (1998–1999). From 1999 to 2003, she was enrolled in Theater Studies at the Higher Institute for Dramatic Arts in Damascus.
Starting in 2003, she worked as a dramaturge and assistant director in several theater projects in Damascus, and acting student supervisor dramaturge for their last year show up to 2006 . In 2007, she worked for the General Committee of the 2008 Arab Capital of Culture in Damascus, where she was in charge of programming Syrian theater and dance performances for the year's cultural program. After this, she was involved in creative writing projects for theater and TV, working as a scriptwriter for several pan-Arab production companies.
When the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, she started to work on her first full-length documentary film Haunted, released in 2014. In 2016, she first moved to Beirut and then to Berlin. Since 2012, Yazji has also been a board member of the Syrian non-profit cultural organisation Ettijahat - Independent Culture.
Yazji's work is marked by her reflections about the cruelty of the war in Syria, her situation as a writer with family in Syria, who takes sides against this war, and by political and surrealist traditions of theater, such as that of Bertold Brecht and Edward Bond, whose play Saved she translated into Arabic in 2015.
If I decide to stop writing, then the enemy – or the dictatorship, shall we say – succeeds in making me shut up, whether I am inside or outside the country, [...] So it’s kind of dealing with your own censorship and fears.
— Liwaa Yazji,
Here in the Park
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Liwaa Yazji
Liwaa Yazji, alternative spelling Liwaa Yazaji, (Arabic: لواء يازجي, born 1977 in Moscow, Soviet Union) is a Syrian filmmaker, playwright, TV screenwriter, dramaturge and poet. Her works, written in Arabic, have been translated into English and presented in the United Kingdom, the US and, in original Arabic versions, in Arab states.
Yazji was born to Syrian parents Haidar Yazaji (1946–2014), an artist, and Salwa Abdullah, who is a gynecologist and served as Minister of Social Affairs and Labour in the Syrian government from 2020 to 2021.[citation needed] Liwaa Yazji spent her early childhood years in Moscow, where her parents were completing their academic studies. The family returned to Syria in the early 1980s and stayed in the city of Aleppo for some years, before they moved to Damascus, where she finished her elementary, preparatory and secondary schooling. She then studied English Literature at Damascus University (1995–1998), and did her postgraduate diploma in Literary Studies (1998–1999). From 1999 to 2003, she was enrolled in Theater Studies at the Higher Institute for Dramatic Arts in Damascus.
Starting in 2003, she worked as a dramaturge and assistant director in several theater projects in Damascus, and acting student supervisor dramaturge for their last year show up to 2006 . In 2007, she worked for the General Committee of the 2008 Arab Capital of Culture in Damascus, where she was in charge of programming Syrian theater and dance performances for the year's cultural program. After this, she was involved in creative writing projects for theater and TV, working as a scriptwriter for several pan-Arab production companies.
When the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, she started to work on her first full-length documentary film Haunted, released in 2014. In 2016, she first moved to Beirut and then to Berlin. Since 2012, Yazji has also been a board member of the Syrian non-profit cultural organisation Ettijahat - Independent Culture.
Yazji's work is marked by her reflections about the cruelty of the war in Syria, her situation as a writer with family in Syria, who takes sides against this war, and by political and surrealist traditions of theater, such as that of Bertold Brecht and Edward Bond, whose play Saved she translated into Arabic in 2015.
If I decide to stop writing, then the enemy – or the dictatorship, shall we say – succeeds in making me shut up, whether I am inside or outside the country, [...] So it’s kind of dealing with your own censorship and fears.
— Liwaa Yazji,
Here in the Park