ALEPPO, Syria — A group of journalists and cameramen in Aleppo worked for almost two years under difficult and dangerous circumstances to produce a documentary film capturing the suffering of the city's residents in the ongoing civil war. Their efforts recently paid off: “Last Men in Aleppo” won the 2017 World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for international documentary film at the Sundance Film Festival. Director Feras Fayyad collected the prize along with co-director Steen Johannessen at the Jan. 28 ceremony in Park City, Utah. The film was made possible through the collaboration of Larm Film, a Danish company, which funded the production, and the Aleppo Media Center, which reports on Syrian news and produces video projects.

Work began in mid-2015 on the 90-minute documentary, which depicts daily life in Aleppo’s neighborhoods when they were under the control of the armed opposition, which was forced to withdraw in late December following heavy shelling and aerial attacks by government forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and his allies. The film highlights the day-to-day experiences of Syrian civil defense volunteers, also known as the White Helmets, as they go about trying to save civilians being shelled. It also documents the regime siege on Aleppo’s eastern neighborhoods.

Hasan Kattan, the executive director of the Aleppo Media Center and part of the team that worked on the documentary, told Al-Monitor, “The idea for the film came up when the Syrian regime’s aircraft were shelling Aleppo’s neighborhoods erratically. As journalists in Aleppo, we wanted to reflect the pain of the city, which buried hundreds of its citizens and witnessed the homelessness of millions. We wanted the world to feel the suffering of Aleppo’s citizens before they had to leave at the end of 2016.”

Kattan added, “The documentary tells of episodes in Aleppo’s eastern neighborhoods through two members of the White Helmets. It shows the difficulties they faced during their work and daily lives, the massacres that the regime committed against civilians and how they coped under the siege that lasted for more than three months. In general, the documentary sheds light on the humanitarian aspects in Aleppo through these two men.”