The response to the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 is an indication of what a wretched age we are living through. What happened during Syria’s civil war ought to have been globally infamous, the sort of dark blip that makes humanity reflect on the terrible things it can do – but with so much destruction, oppression and injustice elsewhere, there is a reckoning still to come. Sara Obeidat and Sasha Joelle Achilli’s chilling, profoundly thoughtful documentary takes a significant step towards comprehending the horror and trying to account for it.
As the Arab spring protests spread into Syria in 2011, Shadi Haroun and his brother Hadi organised rallies that they dreamed would topple Assad. When a march ended in a mass shooting by the authorities and arrests of the survivors, Shadi spent time in jail. After his release a few months later, his family begged him not to continue with his activism because they knew the likely consequences. But Shadi had seen first-hand how violent and corrupt the Syrian state had become. It had to be fought, so he and Hadi stepped up their efforts. They were rewarded with almost a decade in an abjectly cruel carceral system.
