OF FATHERS AND SONS

This extraordinary insider look at intergenerational extremism in Syria is unlike anything previously seen on the subject; it’s no surprise it won director Talal Derki his second Sundance Grand Jury Prize.

Talal Derki’s daring approach – infiltrating a radical Islamist family by posing as a jihadi sympathiser – reveals the story of Syria’s bloody unrest from a deeply personal, deeply chilling, perspective. Following the Berlin-based filmmaker’s Return to Homs (which also won the Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, in 2014), he finds a Syria divided between the personal and the political as he shadows Abu Osama, a doting father of eight and a dedicated Islamic soldier committed to the founding of a modern caliphate.

Shot over two years, Derki’s riveting new film opens a window into the familiar intimacy of a domestic life rendered utterly alien by its setting in the director’s now rubble-strewn homeland and by Osama’s undaunted extremism. It’s a powerful, truly unique meditation on innate love and learned hatred.

"[An] intrepid, cold sweat-inducing study of Jihadi radicalization." – Variety