The original degree show project involved conducting a series of interviews, and later creating a short film about their professional life under new circumstances, with recent newcomers from Middle Eastern countries – refugees, displaced from their home countries due to the ongoing political, economic and climate issues, specifically a baker and a teacher, both from Aleppo, Syria. Prior to lockdown, my attention was mostly focused on exploring why might a baker leave a country like Syria, besides obvious reasons like war and economic insecurity. Apart from coming from a highly unstable region, a Syrian baker dealt with a series of ineffective agricultural reforms in the past 20 years that plummeted a basic food production, like wheat, making the country dependent on import of goods. Bad freshwater management in a combination with drier and hotter weather (due to climate change) resulted in one of the worst droughts in the world, and violent claims over oil production created a more dubious atmosphere in society. 

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When the virus emerged, people around me showcased a great sense of solidarity, but some issues were creeping in, that had an effect on our everyday life. Bulk buying created a shortage of some basic food items, food stores are still struggling to put flour and yeast out on their shelves. The demand for an item like flour sky-rocketed, my parents immediately draw parallels between this new situation and the homeland war, highlighting recalled despair they felt all of a sudden. Although I can’t make a film about the Syrian baker in Edinburgh at the moment, I decided to create a short film about struggles to make bread in the wake of the virus outbreak. There is plenty of food and ingredients in the food stores all across the city, we don’t have to ration our intake or travel for hours to get our food, but flour is still hard to find. It is an interesting coincidence that the baker dislocated from a place that is considered a cradle of civilisation, it is also a place where bread, an oldest man-made food originates from. Bread is a product of early agricultural activity in the Middle East, and we think of it as a staple food essential for life. It is a symbol of generosity and sharing in Christianity – it can be found in Lord’s prayer, on the table during the Last supper, and being multiplied on God’s demand. 

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In A Bread of my Dreams, the concept of bread making is twisted in a dream version of the process where bread dough is substituted with a bread dough-lookalike – a duvet. In the series of scenes, the film contrasts actual bread making, ingredients, and process, with a feverish counterpart in a bedroom. The film explores the symbolic importance of bread as a staple food and a need for a stable home of which a bed is a symbol of sorts. In a way, the film is an interpretation of a dream (or a nightmare) one might have when it is yearning after a bread but is not able to make it or buy it.