Lina’s verité movie paperwork the fracturing of a nation and a buddy group following the Arab Spring.
It’s been 12 years for the reason that Syrian Civil Warfare started, fracturing the area and contributing to the devastating international migration and refugee disaster. The Arab Spring of 2011 was an initially hopeful time for Syrians, crammed with dynamic, peaceable protests in opposition to the corrupt regime of President Bashar al-Assad. When Syrian journalist Lina (who goes by this alias to guard her safety) began documenting what was then nonetheless known as a “revolution,” she and her pals believed that it wouldn’t final lengthy. And when state forces started attacking and jailing protesters, they nonetheless thought it couldn’t get any worse.
In “5 Seasons of Revolution,” Lina paperwork the terrifying real-time transition from peaceable revolution to all-out civil struggle. Filmed between 2011-2015, the footage is tough and impressionistic, typically making it troublesome to get your bearings. Generally Lina data from the within of her bag, her hand partially masking the lens in order to not be detected by the police. Her materials is unpolished and incomplete, removed from the form of struggle reporting you would possibly get from a information section or a extra conventional documentary. As a substitute, it’s largely made up of shaky footage like this, in addition to segments that includes Lina and her pals sitting round, watching the information and smoking cigarettes, ready to listen to if somebody they know will probably be launched from jail.
It’s a deeply private depiction of life throughout wartime, largely attributable to Lina’s everpresent voiceover narration. Her diaristic recollections give a free form to this in any other case summary movie, as she seems to be again in a form of dazed awe at how she navigated this perilous time in her life. She divides this time into 5 “seasons,” every representing a extra brutal shift within the authorities’s response to the revolution, in addition to extra refined fluctuations occurring inside her private sphere.
Because the movie opens, Lina lovingly introduces her pals one after the other — every yet one more optimistic, opinionated and energized in opposition to Assad than the following. They arrive collectively to type a secret activist group to assist manage protests and strikes, and wipe folks’s computer systems in the event that they’re thrown in jail. This vigorous spirit stands in sharp distinction to their attitudes by movie’s finish, when every member is severely worn down by the struggle — and one is now not alive to struggle in opposition to it.
As Assad’s crackdown in opposition to any type of dissent turns into more and more brutal, Lina takes on a number of aliases to guard herself relying on the place she is. Amongst journalists, she’s “Maya.” Amongst activists, “Maiss.” Amongst filmmakers, she’s “Layla.” And “Lina” stays her apolitical upper-class persona, which she assumes at any time when she faces authorities at checkpoints, protests, or the jail the place she spends 44 days.
Lina’s pals develop their very own differing responses to the rising violence. Some, like her provocative buddy Rina, grow to be emboldened to wave a purple banner emblazoned with the phrases “Cease the Killing” in entrance of the parliament constructing in Damascus, beginning a nationwide motion of Syrians doing the identical. She’s taken to jail — although not arrested, she suspects, to maintain the media from getting concerned.
However Susu begins to distance herself from riskier actions like these, turning into disillusioned with the motion and, to a sure diploma, Lina. “I don’t consider on this movie,” she tells her at some point. Susu’s face is obscured with deepfake expertise to guard her identification, additional dissociating her from the occasions that happened.
Lina doesn’t attempt to make sense of what occurred, nor to provide context to her viewers by providing them a timeline of occasions. Actually, we’re dropped into the narrative with out a lot pretense, virtually as if this may very well be taking place anyplace, to anybody. This system is as efficient as it’s unsettling. The viewers is ready to witness the usually banal realities of struggle — not the frantic, action-filled scenes we would think about, however the ready, the uncertainty, and the confusion. A movie made by a lady dwelling via the Syrian Civil Warfare is way totally different from one made by an outsider — she’s not right here quickly. She has no alternative however to go on along with her life.
The footage has an eerie sense of calm attributable to Lina’s mushy, regular narration. She, like most of her pals, was pressured to go away the nation in 2015, and time has given her much more distance from the occasions that happened. As we’re caught up within the protection of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the movie serves as a reminder of how there’s at all times a private side of struggle that exists outdoors the explosive media cycles. It’s one which’s not as riveting as we might want, however maybe its specificity provides a fuller and extra lifelike image of a battle.
Grade: B
“5 Seasons of the Revolution” premiered on the 2023 Sundance Movie Competition. It’s at present in search of U.S. distribution.
