How cin­e­ma is chal­leng­ing the nar­ra­tive around the Syr­ia crisis

In an overview of the ongo­ing con­flict in Syr­ia, Richard Beck wrote that, ​“the Syr­i­an War is at once incom­pre­hen­si­bly byzan­tine and very sim­ple.” A basic root, the strug­gle between the nation’s pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad and the nation’s peo­ple, has expand­ed into some­thing extra­or­di­nary com­plex, involv­ing count­less com­pet­ing nations, inter­ests and ide­olo­gies, many which are entire­ly exter­nal from the region and its people.

More recent­ly there’s been a rush to rep­re­sent the con­flict cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly, a trend which shows no sign of ces­sa­tion. As time pass­es, our under­stand­ing becomes more nuanced and focus shifts. After the rush to nar­ra­tivise in the imme­di­a­cy of the con­flict but before the desire to broad­ly his­tori­cise from a posi­tion ben­e­fit­ted by hind­sight, comes a more wel­come stance, one that favours sim­plic­i­ty. These films, hum­bler and more focused, look at the peo­ple direct­ly effect­ed first and fore­most, plac­ing indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences with­in a wider sociopo­lit­i­cal context.

At the 2017 edi­tion of Sheffield Doc/​Fest three new doc­u­men­taries show the real­i­ty of life in Syr­ia, offer­ing points of sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and speci­fici­ty from which to approach a incom­pre­hen­si­ble, unap­proach­able whole. The most straight­for­ward yet in many ways the most pow­er­ful is Egil Håskjold Larsen’s 69 Min­utes of 86 Days, which fol­lows a Syr­i­an family’s migra­to­ry jour­ney from Greece to Swe­den. Con­sist­ing entire­ly of mate­r­i­al record­ed in roam­ing Steadicam, stitched diaris­ti­cal­ly as the title sug­gests, the film adopts the point of view of the family’s youngest mem­ber, three-year-old Lean. The cam­era glides around the envi­ron­ment at her eye-lev­el, shift­ing the scale and the per­spec­tive of events.

Aside from the inter­spersed cel­lo-and-piano to guide pro­ceed­ings, there is no nar­ra­tive to speak of. Any sto­ry is built by the view­er through grace notes spot­ted in the images select­ed, be it a young girl cling­ing des­per­ate­ly to a ted­dy bear, the grip of a sister’s hug turn­ing vice-like, or the tired smile of a bur­dened father lis­ten­ing to his daughter’s stories.

As the fam­i­ly move through brief paus­es, in makeshift beach camps, first aid tents or road­side hia­tus­es, and all man­ner of move­ments, in car, coach, train or on foot, the cam­era is con­stant­ly rolling just behind, an aes­thet­ic tech­nique famil­iar to fic­tion and increas­ing­ly wide­spread in doc­u­men­tary. With it, the slight­ly pecu­liar sen­sa­tion that by over-aes­theti­cis­ing some­thing osten­si­bly mis­er­able, it might be being done a dis­ser­vice. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly though, the style is a relief. Forced pas­sage such as this might be exhaust­ing, dan­ger­ous, and indeed entire­ly unde­sir­able, but that doesn’t mean it is only that. Some beau­ty is possible.

There’s a sim­i­lar sen­ti­ment in Reber Dosky’s Radio Kobani, though with a decid­ed­ly larg­er dose of bleak­ness. Look­ing at Kobani, a Syr­i­an city on the Kur­dish bor­der occu­pied, dev­as­tat­ed and then relin­quished by ISIS in a short space of time, Dosky pro­vides a por­trait of the city post-recla­ma­tion; focus­ing on a radio sta­tion start­ed by Dilo­van, a young res­i­dent build­ing a plat­form to reflect the hope dis­played in the recon­struc­tion efforts of her city.

Switch­ing between Dilovan’s broad­casts and obser­va­tion­al mate­r­i­al record­ed around the city, Dosky’s film shows three years in Kobani, both dur­ing and after ISIS’ siege. Along­side inter­views with resis­tance lead­ers, per­for­mances from local musi­cians and down­time in parks or bar­ber­shops, there’s inter­spersed footage of shelled build­ings being rebuilt and bod­ies being shov­elled. These tonal switch­es, mov­ing swift­ly from lev­i­ty to sever­i­ty, reflect a con­flict that is cen­tral to the film, between hor­ror and hope.

While Dilovan’s project is pos­i­tive – cre­at­ing a com­mu­ni­ty space in a dev­as­tat­ed area that serves to give voice to locals who had been silenced – that which dri­ves it is any­thing but. The film’s nar­ra­tion, a let­ter to her unborn child, details both Dilovan’s hopes for Syria’s future and her own per­son­al pain – both gen­er­alised, as trau­ma can be and opti­mism inevitably is, and extreme­ly spe­cif­ic, as when describ­ing an inci­dent in which a friend was behead­ed in front of her. ​“A war has no win­ners, both sides always lose,” she says. Even after the sever­est of trau­ma, peo­ple find the will to car­ry on.

Matthew Heinemann’s City of Ghosts takes place in anoth­er sieged Syr­i­an city, IS strong­hold Raqqa, focus­ing on the city’s cit­i­zen jour­nal­ist net­work, Raqqa is Being Slaugh­tered Silent­ly (RBSS), a group that records and releas­es in secret from this con­trolled zone, at con­sid­er­able risk. Heinemann’s film opens with Aziz, the group’s hum­ble spokesper­son hav­ing his pic­ture tak­en whilst accept­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Press Free­dom Award. Cav­a­lier­ly the pho­tog­ra­ph­er says to him, ​“you’re so seri­ous my friend, how about a lit­tle smile?” Had that pho­tog­ra­ph­er seen the doc­u­men­tary to fol­low, by the time this scene, used as a cycli­cal fram­ing device, is returned to, he’d under­stand why a smile might not be so forthcoming.

The most pained of all the Syr­ia doc­u­men­taries at this year’s Doc/​Fest, City of Ghosts man­ages a tricky thing, mix­ing media to explore three points – the jour­nal­is­tic work itself, the con­text in which it takes place, and the peo­ple behind it – all with rel­a­tive clar­i­ty and emo­tion­al rigour. Cen­tral to this is a strug­gle, between the urgency and val­ue of this work and the ruinous per­son­al impact of being involved with it, the dan­ger not just to those in the group, but to any­one con­nect­ed to them.

In one scene, a RBSS mem­ber and his broth­er watch the video ISIS released of his father’s exe­cu­tion, explain­ing that view­ing it reminds him of the impor­tance of his mis­sion, before not­ing that each time he does, it makes him so angry he uncon­scious­ly draws blood from his gums. Lat­er on, after leaf­ing through pho­tos of all those lost, he trem­bles vio­lent­ly and com­pul­sive­ly inhales a cig­a­rette. In a film of con­sid­er­able dra­mat­ic res­o­nance, this, brave, bro­ken man’s con­clud­ing state­ment is at once the gravest, and most pow­er­ful, of any offered by the films at Sheffield. ​“Either we will win, or they will kill all of us.”

City of Ghosts screens at Sheffield Doc/​Fest on 10 and 12 June, and is released in UK cin­e­mas on 21 July; Radio Kobani screens on 12 June; 69 Min­utes of 86 Days screens on11, 12 and 14 June. For more info vis­it sheff​docfest​.com