MIFF NOTES: A Syrian Love Story (2015, Dir. Sean McAllister)

There’s an expansive story to be found in Sean McAllister’s A Syrian Love Story. It is a story that mirrors the troubles in Syria leading up to the Arab Spring, through the disastrous rebellion against the Assad government and out into Europe and the refugee crisis. It is as story that encompasses the personal, the political and the space in between. It is a story that deals with emotional damage and cultural destruction. It is an important story.

Unfortunately, McAllister is far too close to it to give it the treatment it deserves. His subjects, Amer and Raghda, who are separated at the beginning of the documentary (Raghda has been imprisoned by Assad’s people for writing a book about the couple’s relationship during their initial captivity), become a drop in point for McAllister during his visits to Syria and beyond. Their relationship, though episodic, is close enough that the couple’s three children embrace him as a family friend and his actions have an increasing impact on the trajectory of their story.

The lack of distance is problematic here, especially since, unlike Sonita (which encountered similar encroachment issues), McAllister doesn’t appear to recognise how his worldview is colouring not only his film but the family’s dynamic. Over the course of the five years the film covers, McAllister begins to take on the role of confidante and relationship counsellor to both Amer and Raghda, and integration officer for the two youngest boys, always pushing the “Isn’t it great to be in France line” – somehow deaf to the personal struggles everyone faces around him.

The most egregious intrusion though is how doggedly McAllister pursues the line of his documentary, repeatedly bringing up the couple’s issues and Raghda’s imprisonment (to the point that even in the last section of his film, when she is stuck behind a glass door in a café, he can’t help but remind her that it is like being back in prison again). It is insensitive in the extreme.

Peripheral information and the subjects themselves keep the film from being a total washout but it remains a textbook example of embarrassingly self-centred filmmaking. Cultural neo-colonialism.

★★

Trailer:

A Syrian Love Story screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.