BT-04. Silvered Water: Syria Self-Portrait

France/Syria, Feature Documentary, 2014, 92 min

Syria is called the land of dead filmmakers? anyone with a camera is shot. The gruesome Syrian Civil War has barely registered on the consciousness of the world. But now an astonishing film pulls back the curtain on the unbelievable atrocities inflicted every day in this tortured land. Syrian film director Ossama Mohammed, in exile in Paris, was contacted on Facebook by a young Kurdish woman, Wiam Simav Bedirxan, a filmmaker in Homs, who was trapped under heavy shelling. Collaborating with her for two years, Mohammed distilled stories from the footage that the courageous Simav herself was shooting in Homs, along with a thousand videos posted by Syrians online. The result is this horrific yet poetic documentary masterpiece.