Jay Abdo has a mission. “I want to show the world who Syrians really are; why they sometimes had to leave, and why they’re coming back,” says the Syrian American actor Jay Abdo in a Zoom call from Damascus in late March.

Fifteen minutes in, the screen freezes. Abdo comes back on five minutes later explaining that the internet had gone down due to a power cut. The faltering connection is a daily reality for Abdo, who returned to Syria from LA in the summer of 2025, following the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in December 2024. 

The actor was among an estimated 5 to 6 million Syrians who fled the country during its 13-year civil war, sparked by the government crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011. He found himself persona non grata after criticizing the violence of al-Assad’s security forces against civilians in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

 More than half a million people died in the conflict. Syria had a population of around 21 million in 2011; 50% of that population was displaced, and a third of all homes were destroyed. According to government figures in April, 80% of the population is now living below the poverty line.

He arrived in the U.S. penniless after his assets were frozen back home, and initially made ends meet with odd jobs that included a stint doing deliveries for Domino’s Pizza. 

Abdo has returned at the behest of the government to lead efforts to rebuild the film industry as the head of the country’s General Organization for Cinema (G.O.C). He is among just a handful of exiled Syrian film professionals to come back.

 “It’s not easy, says Abdo,” who regularly reaches out to Syrian filmmakers all over the world as part of his new role. “Many have built lives elsewhere.”

He also cites the economic situation as well as instability in the country and wider region, which has seen sectarian skirmishes on the Syrian Lebanese border, Israeli airstrikes on Damascus in July 2025, and now the Iran War, as big deterrents. 

Abdo had spent the previous 14 years in exile, rebuilding his life in the U.S. against the odds. A well-known actor in Syria’s once flourishing soap opera scene, he arrived in the U.S. penniless after his assets were frozen back home, and initially made ends meet with odd jobs that included a stint doing deliveries for Domino’s Pizza. 

An LA producer with Syrian roots secured Abdo an introduction to German director Werner Herzog, who cast him in the 2015 Gertrude Bell biopic Queen of the Desert, starring Nicole Kidman, with Abdo playing the intrepid explorer’s faithful guide Fattuh.

From there, he secured a role in Tom Tykwer’s 2016 comedy-drama A Hologram for the King, starring Tom Hanks as a stressed U.S. salesman desperate to seal a make-or-break deal with the King of Saudi Arabia. Further credits included the award-winning shorts Bon Voyage and Facing Mecca and The Stranger’s Case. Along the way, he also became a U.S. citizen.

“I wasn’t planning to come back, but the Minister of Culture asked me,” Abdo recounts. “They said, ‘We need your American mind, your expertise. You’ve been in the United States, you’ve filmed in Europe, in Canada, you’ve been to the Oscars. We need your morals and your ethics, because this entity is deeply corrupt.”

Abdo says he and his wife — artist, public policy expert and “right-hand woman” Fadia Afashe — found a crumbling organization lacking in the most basic IT support.

 “I’m having to fire people for the first time in my life — people who came in because they were friends of this or that — and seeking to replace them with people who have the right skills,” he says.

 Abdo admits his mission is an uphill battle, with promised public funds that are yet to materialize, which has put ambitions to make five shorts, two fiction features and one documentary on hold. 

He has embarked instead on three short and medium-length non-fiction works, backed by the Ministry of Social Affairs, tackling the phenomenon of child beggars, life with disability, and the stories of women during the conflict.

Other initiatives include a screening season in April of films banned under the al-Assad regime, kicking off with Rana Kazkaz and Anas Khalaf’s 2020 thriller The Translator. Plus, he reveals, the country is also considering the launch of an international film festival.

Abdo remains determined to make films in Syria, whether that’s under the auspices of the state film body or a potential private foundation tapping into his network of contacts in LA and the wider Middle East. Either way, he has big plans to make films that touch on the country’s rich history and culture.

However, he will not be making films tackling the Syrian conflict head-on just yet.

“I don’t think Syrians want them,” he says. “They don’t want to watch what they lived through for 14 years.”