‘Little Sinner’ Director Daro Hansen on Escaping Forced Marriage and Capturing Her Healing in a Documentary: ‘I Used the Camera as Therapy’

In 2009, a Syrian journalism student arrived in Damascus for an exam with a secret escape plan. A Sim card was hidden in her shoe and a mobile phone in her underwear. As soon as she entered the building, she sent a message to her friends waiting outside. Moments later, she went into hiding, fleeing a violent forced marriage.

That student was Daro Hansen, whose debut feature “Little Sinner,” co-directed with Danish director-editor Thomas Papapetros, will have its world premiere on March 15 in the main competition at Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival, Cph:dox.

Spanning nearly two decades, the film draws on an extensive archive of personal material filmed across Syria, Denmark, Lebanon and Greece. What began as fragments of documentation gradually evolved into an intimate portrait of Hansen’s struggle to confront a traumatic past marked by forced marriage, family betrayal and exile.

The story begins when Hansen agreed to what…