HASSAN: WRITER & FILMMAKER

Hassan is originally from Damascus, where he worked as an English teacher and photographer. In 2011, as protests in Syria against the government of Bashar al-Assad grew, he joined in and filmed the demonstrations. In response to his taking part, the authorities arrested and beat him twice. After his first period of incarceration, al-Assad invited him to have a conversation, where Akkad told him “about the systemic torture of his [Assad’s] regime”.

In September 2015, Hassan fled Syria and arrived in the UK, a journey which took 87 days, He travelled via Turkey and the Calais Jungle, before using a fake passport to fly to Heathrow, where he claimed asylum. 

Hassan filmed his journey to the UK, and this footage was used in the BBC documentary, Exodus: Our Journey to Europe which won the BAFTA award for Best Factual Series or Strand in 2017.  In July 2020, he worked with Marc Quinn in creating and installing the statue A Surge of Power (Jen Reid) 2020 to replace the one of Edward Colston in Bristol. 

Following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, he started working as a cleaner for the NHS at Whipps Cross Hospital in East London. While working in the hospital, he took photos of his colleagues, which were published on the Politico website. 

Akkad stated that “everyone [he worked with] felt completely betrayed, [and] stabbed in the back” in response to the government announcing that NHS cleaners and porters wouldn’t be included in an NHS bereavement scheme if they die due to coronavirus. In response, he filmed a message to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, which he published on Twitter. Following this video, the government made a
U-turn, and included these workers in the bereavement scheme. The Observer argued that this video was “directly instrumental in another of the prime minister’s mumbled U-turns the following day”, and British Vogue described how he then appeared on Good Morning Britain, and on newspaper front pages, due to this video.