District Zero

In his small shop in a Jordanian refugee camp, Maamun Al-Wadi repairs mobile phones of Syrians who have fled the war. The memory cards are full of pictures, videos and contacts that link the refugees to their country, their identity and their past.

For many refugees, their mobile phone is their most precious belonging. And not merely for communication: its memory card contains many images, stories and contacts from the life they left behind.

In Zaatari, Jordan – one of the world’s biggest refugee camps – Maamun owns a little shop: a small white container aligned in a seemingly endless row of identical containers. There he repairs mobile phones of the numerous Syrian refugees. They are anxious to retrieve the devices’ content which consists of memories from the past, a time when the war had yet to begin and they were not yet refugees but just ordinary people.

Maamun and his friend Karim invent a new way to satisfy their customers: they buy a printer to print the photos, allowing the camp dwellers to retrieve some of their identity. The film provides an insight into the daily goings-on in a refugee camp.