Of Fathers and Sons

In the gripping documentary Of Fathers and Sons, director Talal Derki offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a radical Syrian Islamic family. The Syrian conflict’s effect on children and families who have fled Syria is well-known. What isn’t known is how the conflict has impacted the children of the jihadists who remain there, and Derki returned to his Syrian homeland from Berlin to find out.

Derki and cinematographer Kahtan Hassoun pose as war photographers sympathetic to the Salafi jihad and earn the trust of a radical family in the northern Syrian province of Idlib. (Talal Derki is an atheist.) Derki and Hassoun live with the family for two years. Besides brief narration at the beginning and the end, Derki is silent. The camera speaks as it captures moments between the children and their father, Abu Osama.

Abu Osama is a passionate member of al-Nusra, a Syrian arm of al-Qaeda. He is also a passionate family man who spends his days disarming landmines and shooting Coalition soldiers before coming home to dote on his eight sons.

The film shows how Abu Osama’s violence mirrors itself in his children’s lives. One son proudly says he cut the head off a bird “like you did to that man, Dad.” The camera captures the boys throwing rocks at girls leaving school, yelling, “Allah is great!” The children also make their own homemade bomb, taking turns kicking it around.

But juxtaposed with these instances is the boys’ perfectly normal brotherly fun and affection for each other: older boys helping the younger ones get dressed, laughing and swimming together, and hovering under warm blankets together on cold nights.

Those remnants of innocence, however, are not to be preserved, as Abu Osama sends his two oldest sons to Sharia school where they learn to be jihadists. He declares the war in Syria will be a long one, and the film leaves audiences feeling that if children raised like his are the future of Syria, he may be right.