Syria
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Ruba Nadda and Alexander Siddig Return to Tiff with Inescapable
Ruba Nadda, whose Cairo Time captured Best Canadian Feature in 2009, returns to TIFF with Inescapable. Both star leading man Alexander Siddig and are set in the Middle East. However, Inescapable is anything but a charming romance, but rather a fast-paced political thriller set in the most dangerous country in the world, Syria. When he learns that his daughter has gone missing in Syria, Adib (Siddig) leaves his comfy business in Toronto to track her down in Syria. Turns out that the Syrian government has abducted Adib’s journalist daughter and that a shady Canadian diplomat (Joshua Jackson) knows more about it […]
by Allan Tong on Sep 14, 2012 -
SYRIAN FILMMAKER ORWA NYRABIA ARRESTED AND MISSING
Last Thursday, August 23, Syrian filmmaker Orwa Nyrabia was arrested by Syrian security forces at the Damascus airport while on his way to Cairo. Since then, he has not been heard from. Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker wrote about Nyrabia and his disappearance in a blog post last week. I had the good fortune at the time to meet Orwa Nyrabia (also transcribed Nairabiya). He is a big, ironic, bold spirit, whose jolly nature seemed perversely at odds with the grimly repressive atmosphere inside that country. With another producer, Diana el-Jeiroudi, Orwa started Proaction Film, the only independent documentary-film […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 2, 2012 -
Ruaridh Arrow, How to Start a Revolution
Although you’ve probably never heard of him, writer and professor Gene Sharp is one of the foremost scholars on grassroots, non-violent protest movements. The son of an itinerant preacher, the Ohio-born octogenarian, whose writings have informed the tactics of protest movement leaders from Serbia to Iran and the Ukraine to Syria, teaches at UMass Dartmouth. He lives a life of relative quiet and solitude, at least when revolutionaries from around the globe aren’t clamoring for his advice. In Ruaridh Arrow’s documentary How to Start a Revolution we get up close and personal with Sharp, who has drawn the direct ire […]
by Brandon Harris on Feb 23, 2012
