VIDEO: LAST NIGHT IN SYRIA—BY @SAFEWORLD4WOMEN

Last Night in Syria is the third film we have made in support of the Free The Hikers Campaign and by far the most personal.

It contains unseen footage of Sarah Shourd and Shane Bauer, at the wedding of a friend Emily, in Damascus, Syria—5 days before they were detained by Iranian authorities while hiking near the border of Iraqi Kurdistan & Iran.

LAST NIGHT IN SYRIA

MAKING THE FILM

We were first told of the existence of the wedding film by Shon Meckfessel (AKA ‘the fourth hiker‘), who was also at the wedding. He knew a film had been made and so he approached Emily and asked if we could see it. Emily and Basel’s response was instant. Anything they could do to help…

When we got the film footage, we watched it over and over again. At first, searching for clips of Sarah, Shane and Josh. But the more we did this, the more we were drawn into the beauty and energy of the event itself…

Emily & Basel at their Wedding

Originally, the intention was simply to show footage of Sarah, Shane and Josh, but the fairy-tale beauty left us speechless. The footage arrived almost to the day of the first anniversary of our wedding. A wedding with a fairy-tale feel about it as well.

Interviewing the Bride & Groom

It was when Emily offered to do an interview with us, to talk about Sarah, Shane and Josh, that the film started to take on its own life.

Sarah & Emily Smile as the Groom Dances in the Background

Our interview with Emily and Basel took place over skype and lasted some two hours, during which the impact of the separation of the newly-weds was self-evident by the fact that Basel was talking from an internet cafe in Syria, and Emily from her home in England.

Sarah, Emily & Basel (Shane's standing in the far left corner in the back.)

Although you do not hear Basel’s voice on the film, the memory of his beautiful Arabic dialogue is ingrained in the making of it.

When we listened back to the recording, the sequence of Emily talking at the end of the skype call became the whole theme of the film.

Contrasts

In her words and her silences, you can feel the many emotions. It was this upon which the film was built.

Shane & Sarah at the Wedding

We realised that the film was about contrasts. Contrasts of this happy wedding celebration, of Sarah, Shane and Josh’s mothers’ visit to Tehran a few days before and the images of the three prisoners.

As Emily says at the beginning of the film, “it feels unreal… like a film.”

And this is how the film made itself, with a slightly unreal dreamlike quality.

Speechless

We must have watched it a hundred times now. And each time we do, it touches us the same way and leaves us speechless.

Shane & Sarah Dancing at the Wedding

Speechless because of the reality of the situation. Speechless that the couple that we see dancing together, so much in love, are stuck inside the cold walls of a prison in Iran, with no end in sight for their release.

~Christine Crowstaff (and Andrew Sampson)