Director Talal Derki embedded himself with the family of Abu Osama in northern Syria impersonating as pro-jihadi war photographer. A founding member of the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front, Abu operates as a foxhole sniper while his kids play amid their family’s barren desert compound. Derki’s camera ultimately focuses on the extremism that is inflicted upon Abu’s children (all named after perpetrators of the September 11 terrorist attack) and is granted unprecedented access to a jihadist boot camp, capturing their physical punishment and mental anguish in detail. But when two of the boys, Osama and Ayman, take to their new education in martyrdom in wildly different ways, the family dynamics shift.
The Asia Pacific Screen Academy expresses its respect for and acknowledgement of the South East Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We pay our respects to the Traditional Owners of country, including the custodial communities on whose land works are created and celebrated by the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. We acknowledge the continuing connection to land, waters and communities. We also pay our respects to Elders, past and emerging. We recognise the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nations peoples continue to play in storytelling and celebration spaces.
