Biography
Feras Fayyad was born in Idleb, Syria. From 2002 until 2006, he studied audiovisual arts and film direction at the École internationale de création audiovisuelle et de réalisation (EICAR) in Paris. He went on to garner first-hand experiences working for TV for three years before focusing on documentary feature filmmaking. Right from the beginning, his works dealt with the situation in his homeland Syria and the political shifts in the Arab world. His 2011 documentary "On the Other Side" (CZ) portrayed the exiled Syrian poet Jaafar Haydar. As a result, Fayyad was arrested in Damascus in late 2011. According to his own testimonial, he was subjected to violence and torture during this three-month imprisonment.
Since 2012, Fayyad works as creative director for Sout Raya Radio, a Syrian radio station based in Istanbul. Following the documentaries "Behind the White Color" (2014) and "My Escape" (2016), he helmed the international co-production "Die letzten Männer von Aleppo" ("Last Men of Aleppo", 2014-2016), which chronicles the everyday struggle of three members of a voluntary relief organization in the war-torn town of Aleppo. The film was named Best Documentary at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.