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A30 PEOPLE & ARTS
Thursday 9 March 2017
‘Cries From Syria’ is an unsparing, must-see documentary

PHILIP ISSA countries are rewarding
Associated Press candidates for smearing
BEIRUT (AP) — It has been refugee resettlement as a
18 months since the body cultural and security threat,
of 3-year old Aylan Kurdi despite the overwhelming
washed up on the shore of evidence to the contrary.
Turkey, the premature end Director Evgeny Afineevsky
of a flight from Syria. hopes his new documen-
Nilüfer Demir’s photo of tary, “Cries From Syria,”
Kurdi, face down in the which premieres at 10 p.m.
morning surf, prompted an EST Monday on HBO, can
outpouring of compassion revive our collective sym-
for refugees around Europe pathy.
and North America. “I tried to show the human
Now, voters in developed side of these people, and

This image released by HBO shows a scene from the documentary, “Cries From Syria,” premiering
March 13, on HBO.
Associated Press
their dignity,” he said in an A lot of the footage is ter of the country’s pre-war
interview from Los Angeles. graphic, and will be unfa- population — are refugees.
“Their dignity is the essential miliar to those who have Once citizens, with jobs,
thing.” not followed Syria closely. belongings, homes, access
Its HBO premiere and lim- Viewers will gaze on the to education and health
ited run in Los Angeles and disfigured corpse of a care, they are now mired
New York movie theaters dead 13-year-old who, by in the camps and the ghet-
falls on nearly on the sixth opposition accounts, was tos of Syria’s neighbors.
anniversary of Syria’s mur- kidnapped and tortured to They are stateless, and they
derous war, one so brutish, death by the government’s need onward passage to
the U.N. has lost count of security services in 2011 to rich, developed nations, for
the death toll. Most esti- make an example out of the sake of their children’s
mates put it over 400,000. protesters. futures if for nothing else.
The government is respon- “Without this brutality, you But the nature of the sub-
sible for the bulk of those won’t understand why ject matter means the film
fatalities. these people are looking will doubtless raise other
“Cries From Syria” is a diffi- for shelter, why the take questions, as well, chief
cult film that opens with a the boats and head for among them: What could
shot of little Aylan’s body the seas,” said Afineevsky, the U.S. and Europe have
before rewinding to the whose 2015 “Winter on Fire: done? What can they still
popular uprising that spi- Ukraine’s Fight for Free- do?
raled into war. dom” was nominated for In one of the final clips of
The historical context given an Oscar for best docu- the film, Kholoud Helmi,
is thin, but in broad strokes, mentary. “You want to feel 33, who earlier described
is factually correct. The the same thing that moth- the uprising in the most ro-
Assad family had ruled Syr- ers feel, to lose their kids.” mantic terms, tells viewers
ia with an iron fist for four Individual cases are difficult she doesn’t know what she
decades, and cracked to verify, but prosecutors
down on dissent with mili- and human rights watch- wishes for anymore. What
taristic violence. However, dogs have accumulated she wants most dearly —
those hoping for an in- reams of evidence point- a brother who was disap-
depth history lesson on how ing to an industrial scale peared by the security
President Bashar Assad of torture and extrajudicial forces — can never be re-
managed to maintain an killings in the government’s turned.
indissoluble core of support shadowy network of de- It is to Afineevsky’s credit
within the state’s various se- tention centers. They have that he leaves these ques-
curity apparatuses and the collected evidence of war tions unanswered. The truth
air force will need to look crimes by the conflicts oth- is, Syria’s future is dark, and
elsewhere. er parties, too, though at a any accounting for the re-
Stitching together footage smaller scale. alities today reveals there is
recorded by activists of the The film moves through the little room for hope.
events in Syria with mov- phases of the war, ending At its core, “Cries For Syria”
ing interviews from people with a chapter called “In is unsparing. But whether
who can only be described Between” that returns to it will move American and
as survivors of Assad’s des- the desperate attempts to European viewers to rethink
peration to rule, Afineevsky flee the war. One of them, their posture toward refu-
delivers a wrenching ex- of course, belongs to Kur- gees is anyone’s guess. His-
pose of the crackdown di’s family. The U.N.’s refu- tory suggests that feelings
that sparked the still-raging gee agency says 5 million of collective generosity are
war. Syrians — nearly one-quar- ephemeral.q