Sundance ’18: ‘Of Fathers and Sons’
by Peter Belsito
This was the most shocking film I saw at Sundance.
A documentary about a Syrian family, a father and his young sons, over a few years where the father is a committed fanatic Jihadist fighter as he raises several of his boys to follow his lead.
No female appears in the film at all here even though they are obviously living in the house with family during the protracted filming.
Syrian filmmaker Talal Derki was most recently at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014 with The Return to Homs, which won the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize.
Once again, Derki returns to his homeland, upping the ante of danger to new heights by posing as a pro-jihadist photojournalist making a documentary on the rise of the caliphate.
The result is an unfettered vérité portrait of al-Nusra general Abu Osama — a radical Islamist leader and loving father — and the gaggle of his young sons who idolize him.
Chief among these boys is the leader’s son Osama, named after Dad’s personal hero, Osama bin Laden. He lionizes Osama bin Laden and celebrates that this child was born on Sept. 11 (in 2007).
He has eight children and affirms that they are to become soldiers for the army to fight the holy war that he and his compatriots have continued. His boys idolize him and ask about the battles he’s fought; and one boy asks about a beheading that he performed.
In this remote village in northern Syria, a landscape of bombed-out homes, abandoned tanks, and minefields becomes a playground for young boys taught to stone any girls who dare to show their faces in public.
Schools have been decimated. Education consists of reciting the Koran and attending military training camp. Bedtime stories regale the glory of martyrdom.
With unparalleled intimacy, Of Fathers and Sons captures that chilling moment when childhood dies and jihadism is born
The people in these communities live the lessons and philosophy of ‘their’ Quran down to the letter.
The most engaging attribute of Of Fathers and Sons is humanizing Abu Osama and his boys and entreating the viewer to relate to them. This has nothing to do with their ideology or militancy, but their humanity. It’s clear that Abu Osama loves his sons. The fatherly ways in which he talks to, plays with, holds, scolds and adores his boys demystifies some of the boogey-man buildup we have of what extremists/radicals are like in the current Western psyche.
What’s more, the conviction he feels to God and the notion that he is fighting for the freedom of all Muslims is genuine. They see themselves as freedom fighters, and they scoff at Islamic moderates whom they view as pandering to Americans for the sake of reaping material benefits.
***
Of Fathers and Sons
Country: Syria, Lebanon, Germany
Year:2017
Genre:documentary
Director: Talal Derki
Cinematography: Kahtan Hassounfilm
Editor: Anne Fabini
Music: Karim Sebastian Elias
Producer: Tobias Siebert, Eva Kemme, Ansgar Frerich, Hans Robert Eisenhauer
International sales agent: Autlook
