Sobre Pais e Filhos

"Trying to hide my immense fear, I said goodbye to my wife and son." Going deep into a family of terrorists and directing a ducumentery itself is so shocking and fearful. A story of the intergenerational production of terrorist, the dust, the smog, the prayer, all of them just be told so calmly, but all have a great mania. Like the pure black smog rising in the end, the story is a long nightmare.

Talal Derki's homeland is in disarray. He travels back to uncover the complex web Jihadists from ISIS and al-Nusra have spun in response to the enemies of God. Following the family of one minesweeper for the al-Nusra front, the film has a disturbing yet enlightening effect. This father passes his core fanatical beliefs onto his three sons. They are a tightly knit family, but the father's teachings play out in more consequential ways than he might have imagined. The eldest son, Osama, named after the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, is particularly disruptive among his schoolmates. The two younger sons are fostered to think violence for the sake of violence is acceptable because God willed it so. It is very tragic to witness the path these boys are led down only to become part of a war machine that may never succeed against more technologically advanced world superpowers. I highly recommend watching this documentary if you want to take a much deeper look into the Global War on Terrorism and how Islamist extremists are cultured.

When you start with children...the hate will go on forever. Very enlightening...the depths people will kill in the name of God.

Talal Derki leaves his family in Berlin and returns to where he grew up in Norther Syria to spend two years amongst Salafist-jihadists & Al-Nusra Front (aka al-Qaeda in Syria) filming their fight against the Syrian Assad government. Their cry, "God's mission, jihad, the caliphate!" "We continue to spread the true faith around the world." In the doc the village we see was once Sufi (pacifist Muslims); now there are no more Sufis. The al-Nusra dream is to witness the full glory of Islam. Tracing their history to the wars in Afghanistan, "When American troops entered Afghanistan ... God almighty had promised us victory ... the American troops were humiliated & retreated because of the Mujahideen". We see little warfare outside of a few Russian bombs being dropped, rather the main focus of this doc is how a jihadist father prepares his eight sons (from two wives; none older than about 14; given that a man's worth is in sons I wonder if no female children is the result of infanticide) to continue to fight by sending two of the oldest to a military & Sharia caliphate training camp for young boys. Being trained to follow al-Qaeda defending Muslims in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Burma, India, Syria. Commonly, they form different coalitions w/other fighters to further their agenda using Afghanistan as a model. "Tomorrow we fight and kill under God's flag (the jihadists black banner) ... the enemies of God." Side note: As to the status of women none were seen, and it was mentioned that if any males saw a female (no matter how young) outside their house they would first be disapprovingly glared at. Likely worse would follow.

Not sure if insight is the right word.....a look at a world that remains foreign to Westerners - I have watched it a few times and tried to pick up small pieces of info and imagine how the view of the world is presented when growing up in that environment. The story for me presented a look at how the world looks from inside a family that has had the same views presented over generations - I did not try to analyze any political meaning...to me that is not what the film was about.