It is always the children who suffer the most, and they will remember this suffering for the rest of their lives.
‘CHILDREN OF SYRIA’ TRACES FAMILY FROM WAR-TORN ALEPPO TO REFUGE IN GERMANY
BY LUCY WESTCOTT ON 4/19/16 AT 12:01 PM
Sara, 4, speaks from her family's home in Aleppo in the "Frontline" documentary "Children of Syria."FRONTLINE/PBS
WORLDSYRIASYRIAN WARSYRIAN REFUGEESFRONTLINE
In the middle of Syria’s five-year war, children still need to play.
In Aleppo, where mostly abandoned apartment blocs are hidden behind large gray sheets to shield remaining occupants from sniper fire, four siblings search for treasure in the empty rooms that have now become their playground. The children also make a competition out of identifying missiles, the types of planes they fell from and how far away they struck.
The journey of Sara, Farah, Helen and Mohammed and their parents, Abu Ali and Hala, from barely surviving Syrians in Aleppo to refugees in Germany is chronicled in the deeply moving Frontline documentary Children of Syria, which will air on PBS on Tuesday night. Marcel Mettelsiefen, the film’s director and producer, tells Newsweekthat he met the family when filming another documentary, Children of Aleppo, which told the story of Syria’s war through the eyes of the country’s children.
In 2013, the lives of the siblings and their parents are deeply entrenched in the war. Abu Ali, a former engineer, fights with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the children are fluent when speaking the language of war and its weapons. “When a shell fell here, I died…I died and then I lived again,” says Sara, who was 4 at the time. Farah, 7, says she enjoys helping her father make bombs and gathering the red ribbons that, when lit, ignites them.
“Children, especially Syrian children, they’ve been able to grow up faster in these circumstances,” Mettelsiefen tells Newsweek. “After 42 years of a people who were just afraid to speak out, this was the first time the young generation—the youth, the teenagers, the younger ones—were brave enough to say, ‘Enough is enough.’”
Continue reading at:
Frontline's latest documentary retraces a family's dangerous journey from Syria to Germany
‘CHILDREN OF SYRIA’ TRACES FAMILY FROM WAR-TORN ALEPPO TO REFUGE IN GERMANY
BY LUCY WESTCOTT ON 4/19/16 AT 12:01 PM
Sara, 4, speaks from her family's home in Aleppo in the "Frontline" documentary "Children of Syria."FRONTLINE/PBS
WORLDSYRIASYRIAN WARSYRIAN REFUGEESFRONTLINE
In the middle of Syria’s five-year war, children still need to play.
In Aleppo, where mostly abandoned apartment blocs are hidden behind large gray sheets to shield remaining occupants from sniper fire, four siblings search for treasure in the empty rooms that have now become their playground. The children also make a competition out of identifying missiles, the types of planes they fell from and how far away they struck.
The journey of Sara, Farah, Helen and Mohammed and their parents, Abu Ali and Hala, from barely surviving Syrians in Aleppo to refugees in Germany is chronicled in the deeply moving Frontline documentary Children of Syria, which will air on PBS on Tuesday night. Marcel Mettelsiefen, the film’s director and producer, tells Newsweekthat he met the family when filming another documentary, Children of Aleppo, which told the story of Syria’s war through the eyes of the country’s children.
In 2013, the lives of the siblings and their parents are deeply entrenched in the war. Abu Ali, a former engineer, fights with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the children are fluent when speaking the language of war and its weapons. “When a shell fell here, I died…I died and then I lived again,” says Sara, who was 4 at the time. Farah, 7, says she enjoys helping her father make bombs and gathering the red ribbons that, when lit, ignites them.
“Children, especially Syrian children, they’ve been able to grow up faster in these circumstances,” Mettelsiefen tells Newsweek. “After 42 years of a people who were just afraid to speak out, this was the first time the young generation—the youth, the teenagers, the younger ones—were brave enough to say, ‘Enough is enough.’”
Continue reading at:
Frontline's latest documentary retraces a family's dangerous journey from Syria to Germany
