A haunting collection of war’s inherent trauma and the ongoing emotional displacement people experience in its aftermath. Shot in 2023 the documentary trundles through an empty city, we are brought to Homs the city known as the city of laughs, yet life is drained from these public spaces and sadness fills the silences. Homs was a battlefield of the Syrian civil war from the 2011 Revolution, the lost years chiselled into the hardened expressions, the documentary taking less of an observational gaze and more of a photographic contemplation as one voiceover describes the stagnancy for some people who lack funds for departure or rebuilding, they survive amid the remains. Recounting different feelings about the destruction, the film captures perspectives that illuminate a war’s constant destruction, one man describes his marriage to loneliness after losing loved ones and a sense of meaning. Without the traditional interview, a painting is etched out, we are separated from the speaker, distantly we watch people living their lives in a city that was gutted through attacks, military fire, assassinations. Reminiscent of Italian neorealism, these moments of stillness are filled with unrest, as the speakers recount different experiences without the filmmakers offering direct explanations of the war. These reflections help us understand that the horrific events leave deep, lasting scars, reframing the story of war not as it is often presented in media or history textbooks, but through the emotional wounds inherited through generations.
An alliance led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) defeating the Assad regime but in the decade the brutal assaults and inhumane treatment of a nation set a new level of how a dictatorship would use its power to punish and torture its own people. The city of Homs had its innards removed and the remaining people left without peace, as one speaker described it, like a child who is beat everyday then one week not beaten, living in a vigilant state and waiting for the next stage as war is not only determined through
Other stories revealed people who had lost everything and were attacked by the Syrian army. These intrusions into their lives were conveyed through the empty, hollow images onscreen.
Anas Zawahri plays with film’s distinguishing feature: movement. Groups of people would pose, blurring the line between film and photography. The stories were layered, with voiceover narration flowing across silent shots of still, expressionless faces. Between these narratives, visual interludes served as epitap
scenes of people from the streets and shops posing for photographs, yet holding their positions unnaturally still. This playful pause stirred a reflection on photography’s ability to capture the aura of people; the memories of those lost lingered like ghosts. One sees snapshots of war and people from foreign lands but the life exists beyond that one frame. A tragic eeriness haunta the film as it is filled with a sense of what does not exist any longer.
