Alaa Hassan is an artist and documentarian, born and raised in Syria. He moved to New York in 2013 and is currently based in Berlin. He started his photography work in 2006 and later developed an interest in filmmaking and audio-visual art. Hassan’s work is concerned with the issues of political prosecution, immigration and the collective memory. His photography has been shown in Berlin, New York, Lyon, and Damascus. Hassan published his first photography book Cardboard Castle in 2017 and co-produced the documentaries The War Show (2016) and Simple as Water (2019). He is currently working on an oral history project that documents Middle Eastern underground culture(s), besides his continued work on political detention and forced disappearance in Syria.