CRIES FROM SYRIA is a searing, comprehensive account of a brutal five-year conflict from the inside out, drawing on hundreds of hours of war footage from Syrian activists and citizen journalists, as well as testimony from child protestors, leaders of the revolution, human rights defenders, ordinary citizens, and high-ranking army generals who defected from the government. Their collective stories are a cry for attention and help from a world that little understands their reality or agrees on what to do about it. This harrowing film tells the story of a people who, despite great suffering, have never lost hope for a better tomorrow. In March 2011, the Syrian people, inspired by events in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, rose up against the authoritarian rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Public protests sparked by the arrest and torture of children who had been detained after writing anti-regime graffiti led to violent crackdowns. As what would become a long civil war intensified, the Islamic State and other groups began seizing Syrian territory and imposing brutally oppressive conditions of their own. Stranded between the opposing forces in the conflict, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed, seven million have been internally displaced and more than five million have desperately tried to survive by fleeing the country. Two-thirds of those who have fled to date are women and children. The Syrian Civil War has wrought years of destruction, spurred a global refugee crisis, and totally destabilized a nation containing some of the oldest relics of human civilization. Director Evgeny Afineevsky got on the ground level of the conflict for this documentary, featuring videos shot on phones by those caught in the middle of the war, and highlighting interviews with children and other refugees displaced by the fighting. Afineevsky sheds light on Syria's complicated history of past dictators, Russia's hand in the civil war, and a power vacuum that would give birth to ISIS. Like all features on Syria's recent history, it's a heartbreaking look at a generation-defining war, one that gives voice to those most deeply affected by it.
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