Best Syrian documentary movies

Filmed over 3 years in Homs, accompanying 2 outstanding young men from the time they were only dreaming of freedom to the time when they are forced to change course. Basset, the 19yo national football team goalkeeper, who became an outspoken demonstration leader in the city, then an icon revolution singer, till he becomes a fighter... a militia leader. Ossama, his 24yo friend, renowned citizen journalist, cynical pacifist... as his views are forced to change, until he is detained by army secret service. It is the story of a city, of which the world have heard a lot, but never really got closer than news, never really had the chance to experience how a war erupted. a modern times epic of youth in war time.

Interviews with three Syrian women who live in exile.

“Binxet – Under the border” is a journey between life and death, dignity and pain, struggle and freedom. It takes place along the 911 km of the turkish-Syrian border. On the one hand the ISIS, in the other Erdogan’s Turkey. In the middle the borders and one hope. This hope is called Rojava, only one point on the chart of a troubled region, a region of resistance and an example of grassroots democracy that speaks about gender equality, self-determination of peoples and peaceful coexistence.

A Syrian radio DJ documents the experiences of herself and her friends as their dreams of overthrowing their elected government give way to the grim realities of sectarian death squads and extremism.

The documentary is telling the Rojava Revolution, with stories of Assyrian, Kurdish, Arabic people. This people are subjected to the ISIS attacks, on the other hand they are trying to build a communal system like democratic autonomy. This struggle is not easy in a region like Syria, where the war continues and showing the effects on people’s life.

In a rolling area of Syria, the villagers live their everyday life, in toil and poverty. Trapped between the hardships of farming, religious and political ideologies, they barely survive. Their children are the only ones that are still full of hope. They imagine their future lives and picture themselves as doctors or engineers. But these are pipe dreams. All they can actually look forward to is farming the land with primitive tools like their parents, getting a menial job in the city or becoming brainwashed soldiers..

The first documentary to present an unabashed critique of the impact of the Syrian government’s agricultural and land reforms, Everyday Life in a Syrian Village delivers a powerful jab at the state’s conceit of redressing social and economic inequities.

Like a visual elegy, My Memory Is Full of Ghosts explores a reality caught between past, present and future in Homs, Syria. Behind the self-portrait of an exsanguinated population in search of normality emerge memories of the city, haunted by destruction, disfigurement and loss. A deeply moving film, a painful echo of the absurdity of war and the strength of human beings.

Seven Damascenes, eight years apart, one collective trauma. This is the story of a city and the psychological scars its people bear from years of war.

The film examines the eternal conflict between good and evil. Two main characters try to keep their home town on the path to democracy. Crushed between two evils they make the greatest sacrifice.

Interviews with Palestinians living in Lebanese refugee camps, some of it shot in Sabra and Shatila before the massacre.

Meyar Al Roumi returns to his native Damascus, eager to start making films, but he is censored. He draws inspiration from it to paint a portrait of the Syrian filmmakers most affected by censorship.

The construction of a dam on the Euphrates River is an example of a country’s economic development. Through grandly composed images, rhythmic editing, and aestheticized details, the director demonstrates his admiration for the interwar avant-garde. The film is a celebration of the new, while at the same time showing a traditional way of life and calling attention to working conditions; it is a refrain-like evocation of an arid country that explores the difficult lot of Syria’s rural inhabitants.

The filmmaker’s directorial debut after joining the National Film Organization, this short documentary follows young children in preschool as they become exposed for the first time to notions of learning, reciting, and proper pronunciation and molded into conformity.

Trained as an electrician, Nazih Shahbandar became fascinated with the technology behind film production and was one of the pioneers of cinema production in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1947, he set up a studio fitted with film equipment that was almost entirely of his own fabrication. He wrote scripts, built sets, and innovated new methods of sound recording and transmission. As an enthusiastic inventor, he produced and directed the first Syrian film with sound. His dream was to film and screen a 3D film. An ode to cinema, this documentary is a portrait of Shahbandar.

A film documenting Al-Sabineh camp for Palestinian refugees in Syria, with an unprecedented experience at the time, as he took the children after filming to show them the footage he filmed of them, the camp and its people, and recorded their reactions, laughter and speech, and added them to the film.