British film tells a Syrian love story
‘A Syrian Love Story,' an acclaimed documentary by Sean McAllister, takes a unique look at the personal cost of the ongoing Syrian civil war away from the battlefield.
Since the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011, a slew of nonfiction films have been made not only to document the crimes committed by the Bashar al-Assad regime, but also to explore the myriad shades of an increasingly complicated conflict that is constantly oversimplified in the mainstream media. Some of the most notable of these documentaries include Talal Derki’s “Return to Homs,” Liwaa Yazji’s “Haunted,” Mohammed Ali Atassi and Ziad Homsi’s “Our Terrible Country,” and Ossama Mohammed’s “Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait.”
No film about this catastrophe, however, has managed to capture the public’s imagination like the British filmmaker Sean McAllister’s latest documentary, “A Syrian Love Story,” a searing, deeply felt study of the disintegrating marriage of two Syrian activists failing to cope with the unpredictable effects of the war. After winning the Grand Jury Award for best film at this year’s Sheffield International Documentary Festival, the British Film Institute-backed production met with rapturous acclaim upon its September release in the United Kingdom. It garnered glowing reviews from almost every publication in the country and is set for worldwide distribution. “A Syrian Love Story” could well be the quintessential document of the Syrian war to date.
