23 minutes, 2015
Direction : Claire BILLET (France) and Lyana SALEH (France)
Production : France 24 (France)

“Rebelle de Raqqa” is about Haya El Ali, alias Rezane, a 26 year old Syrian activist fighting the current regime. She received death threats for recording images of Raqqa being seized first by the Free Syrian Army, then by the Organization of Islamic States, so in September 2014 she fled to France. The images she filmed clandestinely in Syria have been around the world. Exclusively, France 24 followed her. She talks about loneliness and exile, her daily life in Paris where she has found refuge at the Maison des Journalistes.

Born in 1981, Claire BILLET is a journalist. She made her first magazine documentary for Arte in Afghanistan ten years ago. Fascinated by the region, she moved there and lived for a year in Pakistan then for five in Afghanistan, as correspondent. She was France 24’s first Afghanistan Bureau Chief. As a director, she records the consequences of the on-going conflicts with pen and camera.

Lyana SALEH is a Franco-Palestinian journalist.
She has been working for 10 years in radio, television and film, and has also worked as production co-ordinator on many radio shows, particularly for Monte Carlo Doualiya, part of France Médias Monde. She joined France 24 in 2009. She has made numerous reports in Libya, Palestine, Israel and Jordan. In 2007, Lyana Saleh took part in the Media Film Development programme in Morocco. She has been a jury member of the INPUT television conference in Berlin and Warsaw but also of many film festivals in Italy, Spain and Iraq.