The War Show (2016) Online

We saw this film at the One World film festival in Prague. Lulu was in the audience with us. It is a strange film, but one which will probably affect me for the rest of my life. It starts out with a happy-go-lucky tone and overwhelming joy and optimism. A group of friends, who have been dreaming of revolution for years finally find themselves unrestrained, singing and dancing on the streets and shouting that they wish for the Syrian government to fall. This young group of idealists sets out on a road trip across Syria, filming the revolution as it devolves from an optimistic popular uprising into a deadly civil war. One by one, the friends are imprisoned, killed, and tortured to death. This is a real film, a documentary, not some fantasy drama. They really died. And at the end of the film a real Lulu stood up in front of us to answer our questions. One of just two members from the original group who managed to escape to Europe alive.

This film is not for the faint of heart. It will leave you feeling detached. Now, hours after the film has ended, I cannot shake the feeling that it was not real. But it was.

This is a great autobiography/biographical documentary that really gets inside life in Syria from a different perspective than most people would have. While perhaps it seems obvious to say that many Syrians live normal lives, it is not always simple to show that in a film, and certainly this is not the dominant notion that Hollywood puts forward.

The War Show also highlights aspects of how the Syrian uprising and civil war have been recorded on camera by offering a glimpse at life both on and off the main stage of the conflict. In this sense, the camera is the weapon of the protagonist, and her voice is her most vital instrument of resistance.

There are a lot of mundane details that make the characters seem real, even if the whole effect is limited by the harsh realities of the war and the pervasive death and violence of the civil war.

Bashar al-Assad's regime is depicted as the root cause of the violence that overtakes the movie, but some very poignant criticism is aimed at the rebel movement and its radicalization. In this sense it is tragic, balanced, and very human overall.

It could have been better if the protagonist had access to more action footage, but I think there was a limit to how much she could film and survive to tell about it. Perhaps one of the drawbacks is that the protagonist portrays herself and her friends as just regular Syrians, though it is clear between the lines that they were quite privileged.

If you have been following the Syrian civil war in the news for the past five years, the movie does not add anything to what you already know.

Most of the movie is footage from the protagonists camera, consisting primarily of pictures of the ground and people telling her not to film.

The group of people, which we are supposedly following, are all vaguely introduced and you do not get an impression of their character before a picture of them is shown and the voice-over tells you they are dead.

In general there is nothing that justifies this being a movie. Obaidahs story could be written in a one page article and the video gives only a shallow impression of what is happening during the period.

The message of the movie is that Syrians are people with the same desires as everyone else. However that should not surprise anyone. What did surprise me however is that someone managed to make such a bland documentary about the most complex war in contemporary history.