Sundance

RETURN TO HOMS, the powerful and timely documentary from Syrian filmmakers director Talal Derki and producer Orwa Nyrabia, will have its North American premiere at Sundance Film Festival 2014 in the World Cinema Documentary Competition.

The film recently had its world premiere at the highly respected International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), where it was the opening night film and received acclaim from audiences and critics.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS:
Filmed between August 2011 and August 2013, RETURN TO HOMS is a remarkably intimate portrait of a group of young revolutionaries in the city of Homs in western Syria. They dream of their country being free from President Bashar al-Assad and fight for justice through peaceful demonstrations. As the army acts ever more brutally and their city is transformed into a ghost town, the young men become armed insurgents. The protagonists are two friends: Basset, the charismatic 19-year-old goalkeeper of the national soccer team whose revolutionary songs make him the voice of the protest movement, and the 24-year-old media activist and cameraman Ossama. The close-up camerawork takes the viewer right into the group. Scenes of lively protest parties make way for panicking civilians on the run, followed by grim battles in a deserted city, and rising numbers of fallen loved ones. Basset's a cappella protest songs are the only soundtrack, apart from the "silence, interrupted only by birds and bullets." From time to time, the director makes a comment in voice-over: “The world is watching how we are getting killed one by one, while it remains silent as the grave.”

BACK-STORY (YOU MAY RECALL):
There is an interesting back-story to this project: Syrian-born producer Orwa Nyrabia (his hometown is Homs), a veteran filmmaker, actor and co-founder of the DOX BOX film festival, was detained in Damascus in August 2012 by the Syria government as a result of his work on this film. This detention received international attention and leading film industry groups including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, IFP, Producers Guild of America, Writers Guild of America, Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute and other leading American film organizations issued a plea for his release in September that year. Without the support of the film community he may never have been released and the film would not have seen the light of day.

EARLY ACCLAIM:
The Hollywood Reporter's Neil Young writes that RETURN TO HOMS is a "harrowing behind-the-barricades dispatch" and "an unflinching, rousing civil-war reportage, literally dispatched from the conflict's front-lines."

Photos are available for download on the Sundance Film Festival website: http://press.sundance.org/press?q=homs

PUBLIC SCREENING SCHEDULE AT SUNDANCE:

http://filmguide.sundance.org/film/13931/return_to_homs

• Friday 1/17 - Noon - Sundance Screening Room, Sundance Resort

• Saturday 1/18 - 9:00 PM - Temple Theatre, Park City

• Sunday 1/19 - 3:45 PM - Broadway Centre Cinema 3, Salt Lake City

• Monday 1/20 - 3:30 PM - Redstone Cinema 1, Park City

• Thursday 1/23 - 3:00 PM - Temple Theatre, Park City

• Friday 1/24 - 9:00 PM - Egyptian Theatre, Park City

PRESS & INDUSTRY SCREENING:

• Wednesday 1/22 - 7:00 PM – Holiday 4, Park City