An extraordinary, at times excruciating documentary, Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait bears witness to the atrocities of the civil war that has raged in that country for nearly five years. Syrian filmmaker Ossama Mohammed, who has been living in exile in Paris since fighting broke out in his native land, began accumulating hundreds of online videos shot clandestinely by his compatriots via cell phones and other devices that expose the daily brutality of life under President Bashar al-Assad’s regime; these images became the starting point for this searing, visceral project. Mohammed was later contacted by activist Wiam Simav Bedirxan, a young Kurdish woman who had been working as schoolteacher in Homs and recorded the horrors after the uprising in that western Syrian city. Much of the footage of Homs’s destruction shot by Bedirxan, whom Mohammed would credit as his co-director, is included in Silvered Water—a courageous film that will leave no viewer unmoved.
This film is a part of the Young French Cinema program, which was made possible with the support of UniFrance and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.
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LUMIÈRES FRANÇAISES
Launching right after Bastille Day, this new series of modern French cinema showcases francophone narratives and documentaries from around the world.