Vanessa McMahon

"RETURN TO HOMS" Grand Jury Prize Winner for World Cinema Documentary @ Sundance 2014

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

At the Sundance awards ceremony, where the film won the Grand Jury Prize, the jury said: "We wanted to choose a film that really deeply captured our hearts. From one of the darkest corners of the world emerged a film that explores affection, brotherhood and love. And a central character whose conviction drove a generation of young people to fight for what they believe in. Despite inhumane conditions, the filmmaking team was able to deliver a beautifully-crafted film, while working with elements that were totally out of their control."

View Trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYMhVE2iJCk

Sundance programmer Caroline Libresco had this to say about the film in a recent interview with RealScreen: "Return to Homs, which opened IDFA in November, is an extraordinary story of two young Syrians living in the beleaguered area of Homs, Syria. They start out as pacifist activists, trying to fight for the liberation of their country, and the film follows them as they become embroiled in the battle of Homs, and how that pacificism turns to violent means and they become completely enmeshed. The camera is in the middle of fighting, and everywhere a news camera could never go."

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."

-Return to Homs Press Release-

Edited by Vanessa McMahon **Stay tuned for interview with director Talal Derki