São Paulo – One year ago, Alex Mehedff, a Brazilian of Arab descent, was finishing his job as producer of a TV program focusing on the war zones in Syria and Iraq. After a month following the day-to-day of war in Northern Iraq and Syria with his team, Mehedff returned to Brazil with more than two thousand pictures. Showing these pictures to his friends and families, because of the curiosity shown by them, he realized that he should turn them into a book.
Alex Mehedff will launch “World Unknown”, featuring nearly 130 photos, on November 16 in Rio de Janeiro, with a launch also expected for São Paulo. Written in Portuguese and English, the book is being published by publishing company Andrea Jakobsson Estúdio and portrays photos of the war taken especially from the side of the Kurds that are fighting the Islamic State in the Northern part of both countries.
The grandson of a Syrian, the producer lends to the images a personal side that he rescued from his own history. “I was able to understand a lot of things”, he says. His purpose is also to provide answers to the curiosity of the general public, whose only source on the topic is the media, and show the day to day on places surrounded by war. “People think that the cities with conflicts only have war going on, but there’s still a bakery, a barber shop,” he says. The author also leaves “World Unknown” open to the readers’ perceptions, so they can create upon what they’re seeing.
The chance to travel to the conflict areas came up because of the TV show. Mehedff had no plans for the pictures. The CEO and a partner at Brazil’s production company Hungry Man, he got an offer to produce a show on the war zones in Iraq and Syria. Unable to find anyone willing to take on the challenge, he decided to be the producer himself and do what he had planned with his father and brother: to go to Syria, their homeland. He also saw a chance to move away from managerial activities at Hungry Man and back into production work.
The team entered Iraq via Erbil, in the Iraqi Kurdistan. “I worked on building a network and earning the Kurds’ trust,” Mehedff explains. The group travelled to Sinjar, on the border of Syrian Kurdistan, and got to Northern Syria, where Kurds are fighting Islamic State. They passed through villages, learning about the culture, the local way of doing things, the cities, the religions. They experienced danger, with bombs going off less than 30 feet away, Mehedff recalls. But it all worked out well: the group accomplished the mission and got back home safely.
Back in Brazil, the producer didn’t think much of the pictures at first. As he looked at them again and shared them with acquaintances, he realized what he had in his hands. “It’s the gaze of an observer,” he says. The book will be sold in Brazil, but Mehedff claims he’d love to make it available in other countries as well. The book is bilingual, as is the producer, who was born in Brazil but lived in the United States from ages 11 to 25.
Mehedff holds a degree in Human Resources from the Polythecnic Institute (Virgina Tech) and returned to Brazil after his US stint to handle production duties for a film by Tony Kaye, in Rio de Janeiro. He ended up staying and working on a number of other productions, including Brazilian-made films. Now, Mehedff is the CEO at Hungry Man, which is US-based and has won several prizes.
Mehedff has roots in Syria and Lebanon. His grandfather Gabriel moved from Syria to Brazil in the late 19th century. He was eight years old. His Catholic family had been murdered, and he and his sister were sent to Brazil to escape persecution, but the boy got lost from his sister along the way, and was taken to work at warehouses in Rio de Janeiro. He later got transferred to the state of Belo Horizonte, where an Arab family took him in. Gabriel married a Lebanese woman and his son, Alex Mehedff’s father, relocated to Rio de Janeiro, where Alex lives today.
Quick facts
Book launch – World Unknown
Rio de Janeiro
Wednesday, November 16, 7 pm
Livraria Argumento bookstore – Leblon – Rio de Janeiro
Address: Rua Dias Ferreira, 417 – Rio de Janeiro – RJ
Phone: +55 (21) 2239-5294
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani & Gabriel Pomerancblum
