This documentary investigates the events of March 2011, the eve of the Syrian revolution. As all over the world there is graffiti on the walls here, the difference is that here it is overtly political; ‘Liberty and democracy for all, your turn will come Bachar.’ We go to Deraa, a village near the border between Syria and Jordan. It is the place where it all began. We met two 13 year old boys called Bachir and Aziz. They tell of how the Syrian secret service surrounded their school and arrested and imprisoned a dozen of their schoolmates. They were beaten, starved and electrocuted, but they survived. Bachir and Aziz describe their suffering to us but despite what happened they are still proud to be the initiators of the insurrection in Syria. They are now known as the ‘children of freedom’.
We go back to the seeds of the revolution to see how it all begun.
’82 Names’ traces the journey of Mansour Omari, a survivor of torture and imprisonment in Syria. As Omari seeks to rebuild his life in exile and visits sites in Germany that memorialize the victims of the Holocaust, he reflects on how to bring attention to the brutal regime he escaped—and counter extremist ideology in the future.
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During the months before the fall of Aleppo, we gained exclusive access to Staffan de Mistura, the UN’s special envoy for Syria and symbolic representative of the international community.
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Tens of thousands of men, women and children have disappeared into secret detention centres in Syria since the protests began in 2011. Survivors allege crimes against humanity. They’re fighting to free those still detained and to prosecute the perpetuators at the very top of the regime.
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