Of Fathers and Sons
Kinder des Kalifats

Berlin-based filmmaker Talal Derki (Return to Homs) reentered his homeland in Syria in the guise of a photojournalist sympathetic towards the al-Nusra Front, and lived with a radical Islamist family for over two years to create this documentary. Through his camera we witness how the patriarch, Abu Osama, a member of the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda, indoctrinates his young sons, whom he’s named after terrorists, to grow up to love God, kill infidels, and one day be martyrs in what he views as a long, long war.

Derki’s privileged access makes this a riveting study, but the movie is sorely lacking context. We get no sense of the size of Abu Osama’s village, how powerful he is, or how representative he is of his people. After two years of living in this community, I would have hoped Derki would have been able to show us what drives this family and who they are. The father and his two oldest sons, Osama and Ayman, are the main focus here, but we leave this movie without a real sense of any of them. We listen to what they say, and catch glimpses of behavour, but it seems a surface exploration, not the kind one would expect after two years of such close contact.

What we see in the movie is terrible and ugly, but similar films could likely be made in many parts of the world, including the US. And without a more complete picture of how this family fits into the larger Syrian and global conflict, we have no sense of whether we should fear these people or pity them.