DocHouse Shorts: Maybe Tomorrow + Allies in Exile

Maybe Tomorrow, directed by Wafa Mustafa and Waad Al-Kateab (For Sama) follows Wafa’s long search for her father, who was disappeared under Assad’s regime. In Allies in Exile, filmmakers and friends Hasan Kattan and Fadi Al Halabi turn from documenting the frontlines of a revolution to filming the bureaucracy of exile whilst housed in a UK asylum hotel.

Followed by a Q&A with directors Waad Al-Kateab and Hasan Kattan.

Programme

Maybe Tomorrow

Dir. Waad Al-Kateab, Wafa Mustafa | 40’ | 2026
When activist Wafa Mustafa’s father disappears under Assad’s regime, her search for answers becomes a story of memory, identity and resilience.

Wafa is one of thousands of Syrians who have spent years not knowing what happened to someone they love, and that shared reality gives this story a reach far beyond the personal. Maybe Tomorrow follows Wafa with intimacy and emotional clarity as she navigates the weight of absence, refusing to let her father’s story be forgotten. At once a deeply personal act of love and a quiet form of resistance, the film is rooted in the everyday reality of carrying on when closure feels impossibly out of reach.

Allies in Exile

Dir. Hasan Kattan, Fadi Al Halabi | 39’ | 2026
For fourteen years, Syrian filmmakers Hasan Kattan and Fadi Al-Halabi have documented war, revolution and each other. Now, confined to a UK asylum hotel, they turn their cameras inward.

Collaborators and friends since the early days of the Syrian revolution, Kattan and Al-Halabi spent years filming together on the frontlines, capturing moments that defined a generation. Now their journey has taken an unexpected turn, as the frontlines give way to waiting rooms, bureaucracy and the slow grind of exile. As anti-refugee hostility rises around them, filming itself becomes an act of resilience. Drawing on remarkable archival footage from their years together, the film explores friendship, displacement and what it means to keep telling stories when the future remains out of reach.