In Syria: VIDEOS

Screening at the Seattle International Film Festival. Tickets available at http://bit.ly/insyria-yt Lebanon | 2017 | 85 minutes | Philippe Van Leeuw In a Syrian city under siege, a mother of three (Hiam Abbass) is barricaded inside her apartment and fights to protect her family and her neighbors from the raging war outside, in this tense drama where every decision is a matter of life or death. Hiam Abbass (May in the Summer, SIFF 2014) turns in a powerhouse performance as Oum Yazan, a Syrian woman trying to protect her household from the war that is raging just beyond her doors. Barricaded inside the apartment are her elderly father-in-law, her young son, two daughters, their teenage friend, a housemaid, and a young neighbor couple with a baby. Under siege, they try to approximate some kind of normalcy despite the most abnormal circumstances. Outside their building in an increasingly deserted city, bombs are falling, invisible snipers target anyone they see, and armed men fight their battles street by street. As these dangers draw ever closer, every decision could be a matter of life or death, forcing difficult moral choices in the struggle to survive. Director Philippe Van Leeuw (The Day God Walked Away) and the cast-all of whom come from war-torn countries, including Syria-have publicly discussed their intentions in making this film: to share with the world what life is like for ordinary Syrians. This intimate drama does just that, revealing the personal stories too often eclipsed by the headlines of geopolitical crisis.