Many people find it difficult to understand what is happening in Syria. After years of brutality, displacement and bloodshed, many have turned a blind eye to the root cause of the whole mess and in turn stripped the humanity from a very human cause.
Last Men in Aleppo attempts to remind the world of the humanity that remains inside Syria despite years of atrocities. The film gives a deeper look into the lives of those who live in a city governed by death. It was completed a short time after Oscar-winning ‘White Helmets’ documentary shed the light on the true heroes of Aleppo.
Director Firas Fayyad, co-director Steen Johannessen, co-producer Kareem Abeed, co-producer Stefan Kloos, assistant director Hasan Kattan, coordinate producer Khaled Khatib, director of photography Fadi al-Halabi, cinematographers Thaer Mohammed and Mojahed Abo Aljood and archives coordinator Yaman Khatib, all wanted to tell Aleppo’s untold story through the eyes of those who had volunteered for the most dangerous job in the world.
The film won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2017, special mention and inspiration award at full frame documentary film festival, Durham, USA, jury prize for best documentary and world cinema audience award at Sarasota film festival, Florida, USA and top prize in the festival’s premier DOX:AWARD section.
Firas Fayyad, director, tries to explain the reality of the people who were besieged inside their own hometown, filming their resilience, chivalry and patriotism to a place the world had deemed as the “most dangerous city in the world” without pointing fingers as to who made it that way.
“I saw that through the film, I could transport the responsibility of the crimes happening inside Syria to the shoulders of the international community,” Fayyad told Orient Net.
“These resilient people are not headlines in a news bulletin; they are human beings with dreams and aspirations of living in a just world and not in a state of war,” he continued.
Aleppo was once Syria’s largest city and its commercial and industrial hub. However, when the Syrian revolution began in 2011, Assad regime rained down on the people of Aleppo all kinds of hell as they refused to bow down to its authority. After months of battles between the people and the regime, Aleppo became divided into two parts with the eastern one free from Assad’s oppressive regime.
However, in 2015, Russian warplanes joined Assad’s fight against the Syrian people and began to drop all kinds of internationally-prohibited weapons on the free people of Aleppo, leading to scores of civilians killed or injured as their homes and memories were reduced to rubble.
In an attempt to save the lives of those stuck under Assad fire, a group of young brave men joined forces and created Aleppo’s Syria Civil Defense, aka the White Helmets. Their work was concentrated in the liberated neighborhoods of the city as Russian forces made it a priority to annihilate everyone that ever dared to stand against the Assad regime.
In addition to the constant shelling and bombardment, Iranian-led foreign Shiite militias besieged the resilient people of eastern Aleppo in Sept. 2016 in an attempt to suffocate them into giving up their homeland to Assad.
Before the Iranian siege and Russian airstrikes, a young dedicated film crew began their mission to document the reality inside Aleppo. And as the world tried to strip the people of eastern Aleppo from their humanity, these talented men found it even more important to showcase Aleppo as never before.
Hassan Kattan, assistant director, told Orient Net that two main characters were chosen for the film because “they simultaneously embodied life as Syria Civil Defence volunteers and normal citizens living under constant shelling. Both characters brought the behind-the-scene aspect into the daily lives of a White Helmets’ volunteer.”
“Through the characters of the Syria Civil Defense, we were telling Aleppo’s story,” Thaer Mohammed, cinematographer, stated.
Mohammed then explained that they would follow the protagonists for 12 hours a day, placing them at the frontlines of the bombardment along with the White Helmets.
“We were psychologically and physically challenged as we stood against the suffocating siege and the constant shelling because even though we were filming the White Helmets, we too are from Aleppo, we too were filming our hometown,” he told Orient Net.
“One can easily see the dangers we faced during the film,” he argued, mentioning a particular scene in which Assad warplanes deliberately targeted the film crew along with the White Helmets volunteers along Aleppo’s Castello road.
“When a strike hits, it hits us all,” Kattan added.
“There were many times we were not able to film what was happening because of the intensity of the situation effecting everyone at the scene. It would not make sense to lift up the camera and record when everyone is just in a state of hysteria,” he said.
“We had to learn how to cope with the situation and how to make people allow us to film them during their most vulnerable times,” Kattan continued.
“Working in the liberated areas could get you killed quiet easily since not a single day would pass by without an airstrike annihilating a whole family,” Kattan stated, adding that “we were recording the daily lives of the White Helmets; when they ran towards an explosion, we would run behind them filming their every heroic move and placing us in the same dangerous situation faced by any of Aleppo’s Syria Civil Defense.”
Mohamed then explained that “there were many times in which the main characters wanted to give up and stop filming because of the degrading situation in Aleppo. They would argue that ‘no one will care, the whole world is watching us die and no one is doing anything to stop it. So, who will care about this film?’”
“We were persistent on continuing and finishing the film because our aim is to show the world those they turned their backs on,” he continued.
When asked about the ending of the film, Khaled Khatib, coordinate producer, explained that he did not expect such an ending. “We [film crew and protagonists] became very close, and as the events in Aleppo unfolded, we were left speechless and shocked.”
Speechless and shocked indeed. The film’s scenes do not only resonate to those who lived the events, but any viewer would be left speechless and shocked to the gut-wrenching and heartbreaking reality of the people who were forcibly displaced out of their homes as the world watched in silence.
"If I do leave Aleppo, it’s only to the cemetery," said Khaled Harrah, one of the protagonists of Last Men in Aleppo.