In July 2017, POV asked The War Show filmmaker Andreas Dalsgaard what's happened since the cameras stopped rolling.
Are there any further updates regarding the prison sentences or statuses of any of the individuals seen in this film?
Of the original groups of friends that we meet in the film, Rabea, Anonymous and Houssam didn't survive. The remaining groups have all left Syria, and now live in various countries. Amal resides in Istanbul temporarily, Lulu lives in Germany. So does Argha, who left together with his girlfriend Busra after escaping prison. Obaidah is currently also living in Germany.
The Syrian Network For Human Rights estimate that at least 75,000 people have gone missing in Syrian prisons. There are no sentences for any of the individuals, and the imprisonments are not recognized by the Syrian government for most of the detainees. Many die before making it to trial which were the cases for Anonymous and Houssam. However as you can see in the film, Argha survived after trial, getting out on a bond and escaping the country.
There are 13,000 that have been executed in Sadnaya prison alone, the most notorious of the Assad regime's prisons. Many observers estimate that the number of victims of the regime's brutal prison system is much higher. Countless parents, relatives and friends desperately seek credible information about their loved ones who have "disappeared" for years after being arrested by the government without any trace of their whereabouts.
What challenges do you think may eventually or currently exist around the Syrian Civil War?
Finding international consensus on ending the war is the hardest part. Some don't call the war in Syria a civil war as it is fought by the U.S., Russia, Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and many others via proxy.
If and when the war ends, the post-conflict will be equally difficult. We deeply wish that the people responsible for the atrocities in the Syrian civil war will be brought to justice. The people of Syria need and deserve justice to be served. It is vital that any peace agreement includes a clause that can provide clarity to relatives of Syrian prisoners and the "disappeared". The regime likely carefully documents all its actions, so the evidence can be found. Even if your son, daughter, brother or sister is dead, to have closure is much better than to live for years without it.
The filming of this project was in many ways as much a telling of your own personal experiences during the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War as it was about the conflict itself. What moments from this period have lasted with you since the film?
The moments that are the most beautiful are the ones of the protest movement. The friends in the film try to keep them around to help cope with the current madness. But probably the moments that stay strongest with any survivor are the memories of their trauma.
How has adjusting to life outside Syria been going?
I don't think I can answer on behalf of Obaidah here, but to be forced away from your life, country, friends and relatives is one of the most violent things a human being can experience. She shares this with millions of other Syrians. Sometimes she has quoted Stefan Zweig, one of the best writers on the topic of exile. I will quote here a passage from his book Beware of Pity. I think these words capture the sense of longing and insomnia that is connected to missing a loved one--perhaps a brother in a prison cell--or grieving the loss of a loved one.
"Shaken to the depths of your soul, you know that day and night someone is waiting for you, thinking of you, longing and sighing for you - a woman, a stranger. She wants, she demands, she desires you with every fiber of her being, with her body, with her blood. She wants your hands, your hair, your lips, your night and your day, your emotions, your senses, and all your thought and dreams. She wants to share everything with you, to take everything from you, and to draw it in with her breath. Henceforth, day and night, whether you are awake or asleep, there is somewhere in the world a being who is feverish and wakeful and who waits for you, and you are the centre of her waking and her dreaming. It is in vain that you try not to think of her, of her who thinks always of you, in vain that you seek to escape, for you no longer dwell in yourself, but in her. Of a sudden a stranger bears your image within her as though she were a moving mirror - no, not a mirror, for that merely drinks in your image when you offer yourself willingly to it, whereas she, the woman, this stranger who loves you, she has absorbed you into her very blood."
Have you been to Syria at all since the film?
No. This goes to all our friends we met in the film.
In what ways have you seen or do you hope to see The War Show add to the conversation around the Syrian Civil war and the movement to create a civil state?
I think the film shows that the desire and potential was there. That it was very strong and real. And that it was hijacked. The desire still survives and it longs for the moment the nightmare of war ends. Syrian refugees don't desire to live in Europe, or to become Europeans, but they truly desire to live in a just society, where the rule of law is enacted and crimes and corruption don't go unpunished.
What are you working on now?
I am now working on a documentary about the Great Game and Mongolia, the end of colonialism and how the world was divided between the world's dominant powers at the expense of what existed before. Today we live in a world defined by borders and settled people, but this was not always the case. It's a very modern phenomenon.