'A Syrian Love Story': Review

Another thought-provoking and unusual piece of work from journalist and documentarian Sean McAllister, A Syrian Love Story (which won the Grand Jury prize at Sheffield) documents a marriage, a great love story, under the weight of politics, forced displacement, surrounded by death and fear. It’s an unexpected film about Syria – for those braced for a Silvered Waters, this looks at one family whose lives are dissolving and the pain is no less for the fact they survive.

A Syrian Love Story forces viewers to look at these refugees and patriots from a human perspective; what transpires is impossible for us to judge.

Directed, witten and shot by the accomplished McAllister (The Liberace of Baghdad), the BFI-backed A Syrian Love Story is a very intimate piece, accomplished in the rounded insight it delivers through deft editing and shifts in perspective. It’s a slight film, at 70 minutes, getting a small theatrical outing in the UK in mid-September prior to transmission on the BBC’s Storyville strand and its natural home is on the small screen and in themed festival strands, where it should be welcomed for the insights it delivers.

A Syrian Love Story begins when McAllister is on a press trip to Syria in 2009; he is approached by Amer Daoud whose wife Raghda Hassan is a political prisoner, leaving him alone to look after their four sons in Tartus, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast. The couple met in prison, through the bars of their cells; she was an activist for freedom in Syria, he was a Palestinian fighter. As the film starts, she is in prison again for writing a book about their love story. Her battle continues.

McAllister beds down to become part of the family’s personal history. When the Syrian uprising begins in 2011, Amer seizes the opportunity to ratchet up his demands for Raghda’s freedom, and, with some pressure from the Americans brought to bear, she is suddenly returned home. McAllister is dramatically arrested and footage he has shot of the couple is seized, forcing them to flee to Lebanon, and from there to France.

But their Syrian love story is far from over. Frail Raghda is caught, as Amer says, between being Che Guevara and a mother. Their four boys are embroiled in events over which they have no control, witnesses to their parents’ emotional turmoil. Their youngest son Bob, is so small he’s walking unsteadily when the film begins but by its end, he can no longer remember the country of his birth. Fiercely intelligent teenager Kaka, aware that all the friends they have left behind are now dead, is becoming politicised. Eventually, Raghda attempts suicide. A Syrian Love Story forces viewers to look at these refugees and patriots from a human perspective; what transpires is impossible for us to judge.

Sean McAllister shot this film, which was adeptly edited by Matthew Scholes, over the course of five long years, during which he was imprisoned. He would certainly not be able to make this documentary today.