Syria Series - The making of...

This is a project that we started the wrong way and ended up, through a lot of hard work and opening of minds, doing it the right way (or at least a vastly better way).



At the end of 2015, just before the Christmas holidays, we were approached to produce a video series for Mennonite Central Committee Ontario that on the surface, was fairly straightforward: to create a resource for sponsors of Syrian refugees to help them understand: 

1)Who are these refugees and why are they coming to Canada? 

2) What are the "nuts and bolts" of resettling a family in Canada?

3) How can we continue to support them after the initial year of sponsorship?

Piece of cake, right?

Our initial concept was instructional - a presenter speaking to the viewer, telling us about the war in Syria - the stats, the geography, etc. Also the culture - Syrian people are generally like this, the land is like this, and the history is like this.

We spent a lot of time researching the war, and Syrian culture, and put together a rough script outline. And then we reached out to Shamrose Syria, a local Syrian community group that was working around the clock to help facilitate newcomers to Waterloo Region and beyond. We were introduced to a young man who was instrumental in identifying and navigating some of the obstacles we faced.

Hsain: "Rhymes with insane."

Our challenges were legion, but the main ones were:

• contextualizing a complex refugee crisis with integrity, 
• portraying refugee stories with sensitivity (without access to actual refugees to speak to us on camera!), 
• painting a picture of a diverse culture that defies meaningless generalizations ("Family and food are important parts of Syrian culture")
• being informative without being dry or overlong

Hsain Al-Shihabi and his family's contribution to this project cannot be understated. They were willing and able actors whose powerful performances enabled us to portray the story of a composite character, "Tareq" and his family. The experiences of Tareq and his family were gleaned from numerous first-hand accounts of Syrian refugees collected from news articles, videos, and from interviews that Hsain and his mother, Helen, conducted with newly arrived Syrians.

They spent several full weekends with us filming in sometimes less than ideal conditions including this full-on blizzard that roared for the entire day of exterior shooting:

Though Hsain and his family are NOT refugees themselves (they immigrated to Canada more than a decade ago), they channeled the newcomer experience with real heart it and gave the series a powerful and cinematic quality that elevated it beyond merely a point-by-point talking head series.

***

Another boon for us was the very supportive sponsor group and the incredibly gracious newcomer family that we followed for Part 2 and 3. Not only did they allow us to film them, but they welcomed us into their home with grace and generosity. The first time I met these people (Jon had previously met them at the airport on arrival day) was at their home - and they were not expecting us, due to some miscommunication. Even so, there was a delicious chicken and rice dinner with fatoush salad served to us within minutes!

Sponsor group breaks into spontaneous applause as they meet their family.

This whole experience, aside from being a very intense period work-wise, was one of learning and opening and new relationships. Even as we collected stories of welcome and heard our participants talking about the value of setting aside fear/stereotypes/prejudice/apathy, we learned to do those things ourselves, as filmmakers and as individuals. It was a true honour and life-changing process for us to work with these brave, generous, compassionate, gracious sponsors and newcomers.

Watch the series here:
Part 1: Leaving Syria
Part 2: Welcome to Canada
Part 3: A New Home