After he completed his mandatory military service, the filmmaker was held in retention as the revolution unfurled in his country. His military rank was that of a sergeant. During these times, he would go back to his home, located in the middle of Damascus city, take off his military uniform and return to his normal life, working as an assistant director with his friend, the filmmaker Mohammed Malas. To make sense of this schizophrenic situation, he decides to take his camera and start shooting a ‘making-of’ that will eventually go beyond Malas’s film.
2014-08-14
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6.7The story of the biggest demonstration in human history, which took place on 15th February 2003, against the impending war on Iraq.
10.0How the Monuments Came Down is a timely and searing look at the history of white supremacy and Black resistance in Richmond. The feature-length film-brought to life by history-makers, descendants, scholars, and activists-reveals how monuments to Confederate leaders stood for more than a century, and why they fell.
6.0The untold story of Micronesian citizens fighting America's wars. Through the personal odyssey of the Nenas, one family experiences the consequences of military service, as they represent a pristine Pacific island on the brink of economic collapse.
7.2Single mother Anna and her four children live in the front-line war zone of Donbas, Ukraine. While the outside world is made up of bombings and chaos, the family is managing to keep their home a safe haven, full of life and full of light. Every member of the family has a passion for cinema, motivating them to shoot a film inspired by their own life during a time of war. The creative process raises the question of what kind of power the magical world of cinema could have during times of disaster. How to picture war through fiction? For Anna and the children, transforming trauma into a work of art is the ultimate way to stay human.
0.0In 2012 Dalya and her mother Rudayna fled Aleppo for Los Angeles as war took over. Months before, Rudayna learns a secret that destroys her marriage, leaving her single at midlife. Arriving in LA, Dalya enrolls as the only Muslim at Holy Family Catholic High School. Can mother and daughter remake themselves while holding on to their Islamic traditions?
1.0This feature documentary examines its own genre, which has often been called Canada's national art form. Released in the year of the NFB's 75th birthday, Shameless Propaganda is filmmaker Robert Lower's take on the boldest and most compelling propaganda effort in our history (1939-1945), in which founding NFB Commissioner John Grierson saw the documentary as a "hammer to shape society". All 500 of the films produced by the NFB until 1945 are distilled here for the essence of their message to Canadians. Using only these films and still photos from that era, Lower recreates the picture of Canada they gave us and looks in it for the Canada we know today. What he finds is by turns enlightening, entertaining, and unexpectedly disturbing.
0.0The biggest trial of Nazi war crimes ever: 360 witnesses in 183 days of trial - a stunning and gripping portrayal of the most terrible massacre in history.
6.6Shot by a reported “1,001 Syrians” according to the filmmakers, SILVERED WATER, SYRIA SELF-PORTRAIT impressionistically documents the destruction and atrocities of the civil war through a combination of eye-witness accounts shot on mobile phones and posted to the internet, and footage shot by Bedirxan during the siege of Homs. Bedirxan, an elementary school teacher in Homs, had contacted Mohammed online to ask him what he would film, if he was there. Mohammed, working in forced exile in Paris, is tormented by feelings of cowardice as he witnesses the horrors from afar, and the self-reflexive film also chronicles how he is haunted in his dreams by a Syrian boy once shot to death for snatching his camera on the street.
7.1Michael Moore's view on how the Bush administration allegedly used the tragic events on 9/11 to push forward its agenda for unjust wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
6.8Letter from Beirut documents the filmmaker's return to Beirut during one of the lulls, three years after the outbreak of the civil war, animated by the urge to return. She is confronted by the physical, emotional and psychological ravages of the war, terrified and sorrowful, she cannot find her place in the city. In that quest, she communicates with everyday people, friends, neighbors, people riding the bus across the city's eastern and western flanks. To pace her journeying and dramatic unraveling of the film, Saab borrows the guise of a letter read in a voice-over, written by world-renowned poet Etel Adnan. A rare document from the civil war, Letter from Beirut lays bare and spontaneously how people make sense of their everyday in the midst of chaos, violence, terror and sorrow.
0.0Over the period of 25 years the director met General Võ Nguyên Giáp, a legendary hero of Vietnam’s independence wars, a number of times. She was the first American who entered the home of the “Red Napoleon”. The fruit of this friendship is a film, personal and politically involved at the same time. Travelling across the country and talking to important figures as well as ordinary people, the director finds out more about her roots and offers the audience a unique perspective on Vietnam’s present and past.
5.0Using historically-accurate, battle-filled re-enactments and interviews with expert historians and noted authors, this two-part documentary series brings to vivid life the captivating true stories behind Britain's bloody civil wars.
7.0Presenter and former England football captain Gary Lineker follows in the footsteps of his grandfather, Stanley Abbs, to explore a brutal but often overlooked chapter of World War Two.
0.0When artist Janet Biehl fell in love with radical American philosopher Murray Bookchin in the 1980s whilst editing his ground-breaking opus “The Ecology of Freedom”, she could never have imagined that it would one day take her halfway across the globe. Now, over 40 years later, Janet travels from America to the Middle East to witness something remarkable - how Murray’s ideas have ignited a female-led revolution in North-East Syria, where society is being rebuilt in the wake of victory over ISIS. Janet meets the women who are turning her late partner’s political theories into a modern reality, creating a grassroots communal democracy. Janet draws what she sees, and her illustrations capture the humanity of ordinary people in their struggle to self-govern. Now, at this critical moment for Syria and with this revolutionary project under renewed threat, "Threads of a Revolution" reveals a possible way forward for those prepared to fight for a new way to live.
5.0World War II propaganda short which focuses on the dangers of inadvertent dispersal of military information.
4.8In focusing his attention on the competitors of Mr Gay Syria, director Ayse Toprak shatters the one-dimensional meaning of “refugee”. Using the pageant as a means of escape from political persecution, the organiser Mahmoud — already given asylum in Berlin — hopes to offer the winner a chance to travel as well as bring international attention to the life-threatening situations faced by LGBT Syrians.
0.0Fleeing the 1980 Civil War in El Salvador, Dora Rodriguez, among a group of twenty-five asylum seekers, were abandoned by their guide and left to fend for themselves in the relentless Sonoran desert of Arizona.