{"id":1313,"date":"2019-03-27T04:09:13","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T04:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsnewsforyou.com\/?p=1313"},"modified":"2019-03-27T04:09:13","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T04:09:13","slug":"film-review-a-syrian-love-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=1313","title":{"rendered":"Film review: a Syrian love story"},"content":{"rendered":"

The film opens with shots
\nthat could be of a holiday, in a Syria long destroyed. The filmmaker, Sean
\nMcAllister (The Liberace of Baghdad<\/em>, The Reluctant Revolutionary<\/em>), is in
\nSyria in 2009, visiting as part of a state initiative to drum up tourism. But
\nhe is looking for \u201cgritty\u201d stories, the real struggles of real people. Though
\nsome Syrians rebuff his enquiries, telling him to stick to the script and asking
\nwhy he is\u2014and by implication all western journalists\u2014\u201calways looking for
\nsomething negative\u201d, one night he meets Amer, who is keen on telling him about
\nhis imprisoned wife, Ragda. He has found his story.<\/p>\n

Ragda and Amer met in
\nAssad\u2019s prisons: he had been a Palestinian freedom fighter and she was a Syrian
\nrevolutionary, and he saw her through a hole in his cell wall, bruised and
\nbloodied from a beating by Assad\u2019s thugs. They fell in love and four children
\nlater she has written a book telling their story, and is once again in prison.
\nAmer speaks to Sean determined to get her out, but it is only after the \u2018Arab
\nSpring\u2019 protests and mounting pressure from the west that she is released. They
\nhave a brief period of bliss, clearly very much in love, but as the protests devolve into war, Sean is
\narrested and his footage of the family confiscated, and they are forced to flee
\nto Lebanon.<\/p>\n

They are all unhappy in
\nLebanon. Ragda feels guilty at having \u201cbetrayed\u201d the revolution she helped to
\nstart, feeling the need to fight but, as Amer says, torn between \u201cbeing Che Guevara and a
\nmother\u201d. Amer wants to go to Europe; he sees no future for them since he cannot get work because he is not
\nLebanese and the children cannot attend school.<\/p>\n

They embody two different
\nresponses to what became of the Syrian revolution: the fleeing father, only
\nwanting \u201csafe and quiet\u201d futures for his family, the mother wanting to fight,
\nto struggle, to win \u201cthe same future for them but in Syria,\u201d whatever the price.
\nAnd the price has been death, for many of their friends and family, and for
\nhundreds of thousands of Syrians.<\/p>\n

Over the course of
\nseveral years, the film follows the couple\u2019s journey, sharing key moments with
\nthem as their relationship and their country unravel. The family\u2019s story, their
\npersonal trauma, is inextricable from that of a country torn apart. The war
\nbrings their differences to the fore until they become insurmountable, and
\ntheir heartbreak has a profound impact on their growing boys\u2014perhaps even more
\nso than their parents\u2019 imprisonment by Assad, or the war, or becoming a
\nrefugee. And yet they adapt, in their own ways.<\/p>\n

The story is told almost
\ntenderly but without falling into clich\u00e9, and our window onto Ragda and Amer\u2019s
\nlives, via Sean\u2019s relationship with them, is intimate but not intrusive. Sean\u2019s
\ntouch is light and as narrator he seems to recede into the background, even
\nthough in the process of documenting their lives he has also changed them. Though
\nthe camera is hand held giving it a low-budget feel, the intensity of emotion,
\nthe quick but calm pace and dramatic scoring mean the documentary views like a tense drama,
\nheavily investing us in the choices the couple make and the different paths
\nthey choose.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of the
\nfilm, Amer wearily asks Sean why he\u2019s still shooting when he has supposedly
\n\u201cfinished\u201d; but given what we have learned about Amer, perhaps he is just weary
\nof having a life worth filming\u2014the end of the film is the end of the story. For
\nRagda, however, the story seems to be just beginning.<\/p>\n

See the film website\u00a0for upcoming screenings.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The film opens with shots that could be of a holiday, in a Syria long destroyed. The filmmaker, Sean McAllister (The Liberace of Baghdad, The Reluctant Revolutionary), is in Syria in 2009, visiting as part of a state initiative to drum up tourism. But he is looking for \u201cgritty\u201d stories, the real struggles of real…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}