Cries from Syria

The documentary tells what happened in Syria from the protests that began in 2011, from the inside. Those who speak are ordinary people: children, mothers, people who joined the demonstrations, soldiers who left the army, refugees. Most of the footage was shot by Syrians on phones and small cameras. The sequence it lays out is this: demonstrations, detentions, the army's intervention, war, exodus. Evgeny Afineevsky's film screened at Sundance in 2017 and was shown on HBO. Its position is plain: the telling stands against the Assad government and does not give the war's other actors the same room. Critics noted this. Some of what it reports, such as the use of chemical weapons and barrel bombs, has been documented by United Nations investigations. The footage is very hard to watch.