'Silvered Water': Director Ossama Mohammed in Conversation with Richard Peña and Madeleine Dobie

“Silvered Water” chronicles the horrors of the Syrian civil war by weaving together grainy, pixelated footage captured on cell phones by civilians stuck in the middle of the ongoing violence, with commentaries by Mohammed and young Kurdish school teacher, Wiam Simay Bedrixan, as she films the destruction of her home city of Homs on a small camera.

Mohammed made the film while in exile in Paris by editing several hundred hours of footage that he received from people on the ground. In conversation with Pena and Prof. Madeleine Dobie after the screening, he described the making of the film and how, despite their horrific content, how he was able to see a cinematic and lyrical beauty of humanity in the images that comprise the film.

Listen to the discussion here: