Waiting for the Barbarians shows director Mohammad Ali Atasai confronts lost cities, from Granada to Damascus. The film departs from a meeting between Atasi and sculptor Essam al-Basha and his wife Nicole in Granada, where Essam is preparing to make a bust of philosopher Abu Alaa al-Ma’arri to replace a statue whose head was cut off by jihadists when they took over the town of Ma'arra. Through the process of making this film, Atassi explores his unsettled relationship to the city of Ma’arra and to other cities he has lost.