This Rain Will Never Stop takes the audience on a powerful, visually arresting journey through humanity’s endless cycle of war and peace. The film follows 20-year-old Andriy Suleyman as he tries to secure a sustainable future while navigating the human toll of armed conflict. From the Syrian civil war to strife in Ukraine, Andriy’s existence is framed by the seemingly eternal flow of life and death.

Visually, THIS RAIN WILL NEVER STOP relies heavily on static imagery, and the film is shot entirely in black and white. The absence of color erases the geographical identity of space, as we move between peaceful and military scenes, and between different country locations. We start from arial shots in which we couldn’t even recognize what planet is it. The first episode will open for us the grey zone. the zone between two military forces. From this point we are starting our journey through our world. At the beginning we don’t understand exactly who is the main character of the film, the camera is looking for protagonist among different people until we find Andriy Suleyman and his family. We rely on visual rhymes to heighten this ambiguity, showing congruity and contradiction between images of military machinery and Red Cross humanitarian convoys, national dance in Ukraine and Kurdistan, parades of soldiers and Gay pride in Germany. The film is divided into 10 parts, each marks by Arabic number 0 1 2 34567890, from 0 to 0, this will emphasize the cycling of such thing as war and peace, destroying and rebuilding, life and death. The flow of the water is our main metaphor and rhyme in the film and a lot of scenes are connected with water. Our film is divided into two worlds: the private story of Suleyman’s family and metaphorical background of the world. These worlds are going in parallel and in every scene they are coming together, strengthening each other. The final scene emphasizes the primary meaning of the film. We see Syrian refugees in Germany, who are learning new language for them. After that our camera observes the big crowd of the people on the streets which starts to mix with different people from different places, refugees with soldiers, Ukrainian dancers with Kurdish. Following this, all these flows of people are mixing in the one. The war and peace, love and hate, as well as life and death couldn’t exist without each other and actually create our world where we are living.

100% of funds donated to this event will go to support Ukraine. 

About the Filmmakers

Patrick Hamm is an award-winning filmmaker and founder of Bulldog Agenda GmbH, a Berlin-based production company. A 2018 Berlinale Talents alumnus, he specializes in creative documentary and character-driven issue films. He most recently co-produced the hybrid documentary This Rain Will Never Stop (IDFA, GoEast), which follows a Syrian-Ukrainian Red Cross worker as he tries to secure a sustainable future while navigating the human toll of two wars. Patrick is also the producer of Freedom For the Wolf (IDFA, Sheffield DocFest, Slamdance), an epic investigation into the global rise of illiberal democracy; and executive producer of Copwatch (Tribeca) and Dark Secrets of a Trillion Dollar Island: Garenne (Arte, BBC). Patrick holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University and a B.A. in Ethics, Politics & Economics from Yale University. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Alina Gorlova, Director, was born and raised in Ukraine, she graduated Karpenko-Kary Kyiv National University of Theatre, Film and Television. Alina is also experienced in making fiction shorts, and social and commercial ads. In 2016, she completed her first mid-length documentary, Kholodny Yar. Intro. Her second documentary, No Obvious Signs, has won multiple awards, including the MDR film award for outstanding Eastern European Movie at DokLeipzig 2018.

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