EnstANtane: Diaspora Doc makes Road Show across Syriac Communal and Church Centres in Sweden

The new documentary “EnstANtane” on the diaspora of the Syriac village in Turkey called Azekh or Beth Zabday, Turabdin region of Bethnahrin (Mesopotamia), will make a road show across cities in Sweden which have a large Syriac population.

In Sweden the documentary will be screened in Göteborg, Jönköping, Södertälje, Örebro, Västerås, Norrköping and Norsborg. In December 2019 the documentary was screened across Germany.

Azekh lies on the edge of the Tur Abdin region of Beth Nahrin. The town is located in Sırnak province in current day southeastern Turkey and called Idil in Turkish. The town has different ethnic groups, Arabs, Kurds, Yazidi’s and Syriacs.

Although in the sixties it had thousands of Syriacs living in het town centered around the church of the Virgin of Azekh, the current number of Syriac families can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The many destroyed ruined churches are evidence of the rich and ancient history of Azekh as a Syriac town.

The Azekh diaspora is scattered all over the world with large communities in Syria, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland.

Director Aytekin on the Suryoye (Syriacs)*
The documentary was made and directed by Turkish filmmaker Hakan Aytekin. In a short introduction note to the Zentralrat Orientalischer Christen in Deutschland on the documentary, Aytekin says,

“the documentary is about the Suryoye (Turkish: Süryani), one of the historical riches of peoples in Turkey – which is disappearing from Turkey since the migration wave started at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The starting point for the research and documentation is a photo, a snapshot, a moment. All 18 people in the photo taken 30 years ago in the city of Idil (Turkish name for Beth Zabday), lived there at that time. Today 9 of them live in Germany and 7 in Switzerland.

I found the picture on social media. I followed the photo and the people on it.
We have been working on this project for about a year. We were able to reach all 18 people and did interviews with 15 of them. The youngsters in the photo now have children of their own. Some even have grandchildren.

Although they are together in the picture, almost all of them live in different cities. The thing they have in common is their remembrance to Turkey and Idil as the center of their childhood, which they cannot forget.”

Entrance is free and the documentary is Swedish subtitled.

* Suryoye means “Syriacs” in the native Syriac-Aramaic language