In 2009, a Syrian journalism student entered a Damascus exam hall with a secret: a SIM card hidden in her shoe and a mobile phone in her underwear. According to variety.com, with one coded message to friends outside, Daro Hansen abandoned a violent forced marriage and went into hiding.
Now, nearly two decades later, that escape forms the backbone of Little Sinner, a documentary premiering at CPH:DOX on March 15. Co-directed by Hansen and Thomas Papapetros, the film is an intimate archive of trauma, exile and eventual healing.
The documentary spans Syria, Denmark, Lebanon and Greece, utilising years of personal footage. What began as Hansen’s private “camera therapy” evolved into a professional feature after she met Papapetros in 2012.
“I used the camera as a personal coping mechanism,” Hansen explains. “It was super private.”
While the film details harrowing abuse, including a moment where her husband attempted to scalp her, Hansen is clear that the story is about social control, not religion. Raised in a non-Muslim family, she stresses that these pressures exist globally.
“People associate forced marriage with Islam, but this is about tradition,” she says. “Social control exists in every culture, it’s in Denmark, the US and China.”
The emotional turning point of the film arrives when Hansen realises her deepest wound wasn’t the violence itself, but the moment her mother failed to protect her. By working with refugees in Greece and Lebanon, Hansen finally found the courage to stop fleeing her own past.
Produced by GotFat Productions, the film concludes with the birth of Hansen and Papapetros’s son, Lukas. For Hansen, the title Little Sinner refers to the “sin” of betraying oneself to please others.
“I forgot myself,” she says. “I hope people find a shorter way home to themselves than I did.”
•Featured image courtesy of CPH:DOX
