In 2010 a remarkable chain of events began across the Arab world confronting the status quo, that of nations essentially run as dictatorships oppressing their citizens while living the high life on the backs of those oppressed, often through intimidation and force. For whatever reason, protests were staged against these regimes in countries such as Egypt, Libya and Tunisia which inspired millions across Africa and the Middle East to join together in an attempt to overthrow the totalitarian governments who had in many cases run their countries for decades, but these demonstrations were met with violence and torture. That did little to quell the revolution, if anything it merely strengthened the rebels' resolve...
It's tempting to see the so-called Arab Spring as one large amorphous mass of rebellion, very much an us versus them state of affairs where the little guy discovered he was part of something huge in comparison to those trying to suppress and control them, but as events continued to unfold it became clear to those wishing to dig deeper that things were a lot more complicated than that, and director Greg Barker's account of three tales from Libya, Syria and Bahrain did in some ways tend to lean too heavily on the Western notion that it was a simple case of goodies versus baddies. However, if he could be accused of being simplistic, that was not to say the complex nature of the crisis was left unaddressed.
The film took a look at the wider implications by concentrating on the personal, a clever method of bringing home to audiences what often looked like a selection of large crowds either yelling or being shot at on the news bulletins, the more intimate portrait of these people as individuals somewhat lost. First was Osama, whose son Muhannad was an American-born protestor who went to his father's homeland of Libya to join in with the fighting against General Muammar Gadaffi who had ruled over the country with an iron fist and in the process had become a popular bogeyman for the Western media. Though it's not mentioned in this film, it would be well known to everyone watching what had happened to him, thus representing the Libyan struggle as a victory.
The trouble with that was just as one figure of power was eliminated, a bunch of other groups attempted to take his place, and not all of them were friendly, something that We are the Giant preferred to downplay. In the second story of the disaster in Syria, we begin to get a fuller picture, as the peaceful protestors for whom the quote from the Prophet Muhammad "Faith is a restraint against all violence, let no true believer commit violence" has become a lesson to live by pits them against both the destructive government and the radical Islamists who saw an opportunity to create a state more under the hardline religious rules than the pacifists wished to implement. The two rebels from that movement we see interviewed tell us that most of their sympathisers have been forced out, leaving the two extremes to lay waste to the land.
Lastly is the story given most time, the lesser publicised struggle against the rulers of Bahrain as seen through the eyes of Maryam and Zainab, daughters of another human rights advocate who sees his own human rights utterly ignored. These women make no bones about both endorsing their father's tenets that peaceful uprising is the only way forward since the moment you take up arms you are giving the enemy all the excuse they need to basically murder you in the name of the authority, and blaming the way the Bahrainian regime is backed by the sympathetic West who have wealthy business and political interests there for propping up a government that should have been toppled a long time ago. With much footage from the ground level, including harrowing scenes in all three tales reminding us that it's not only gun-toting men who are being struck down, but women and children as well, perhaps the film's context of more famous revolts from the 20th Century was again simplifying it too far, but if this raised valid interest and pushed the crucial pro-peace, anti-violence narrative, fair enough.
