Father's Footsteps: How short film brings realities of war-torn Syria without any violence on screen | Exclusive

War is a subject that has been depicted in cinema for over a century now. Times change, decades change, and centuries change but like war, cinema showcasing its grim realities has been constant. A new chapter in this genre is Father’s Footsteps, a short film by Syrian filmmaker Mohamad Ali, which brings to life a cross-section of how life is affected by the strife in Suria.

The film, which hardly depicts a story of a family, takes an interesting detour in portrayal of war by choosing not to show the actual war. In fact, the entire film does not depict a single act of violence apart from the constant sense of doom and the background noises of gunfire and shelling. The film, which is a selection at the Moscow International Film Festival, is a production of the Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute.

In an interaction with DNA, the director Mohamad Ali talks about the challenges that went into the making of the film and what he hopes to achieve by screening it in Moscow. Produced by Ishita Mehta, with Apoorva Bakshi and Tushar Tyagi executive producers, Father’s Footsteps stars Syrian actors Nowar Yousef and Sara Altawil, along with Indian actors Veer Behal and Jennifer Sidhu.

Mohamad Ali says apart from him and two of the actors, much of the crew of the film was Indian. It was shot in India as well as filming in Syria was not possible. “It was very difficult to shoot with a team that had never stepped foot in Syria. They had to recreate a country they did not know anything about. They didn’t know what it looks like, how light falls there, what houses there look like from the inside, what sounds the cities have. And yet, we had to show all that. That was a challenge I enjoyed,” says the filmmaker.

The casting for the film was as difficult as the shoot. For the lead role of the child, the team auditioned 45 children before finalising Veer Behal. It then took him 15-20 days of training to learn the sign language his character speaks in. For the role of the child’s grandmother, Ali found Jennifer at an old age home in Kolkata. “Doing all this in a student’s budget wasn’t easy at all,” says Mohamad Ali, adding, “But you find ways to make things work in the most effective way.

The film was part of the recent Moscow International Film Festival. To screen an anti-war film in present-day Russia is indeed a curious decision but Mohamad Ali justifies it. “There was a long internal debate about playing the film in Moscow after they invited us. But I understand that the people of Russia are as anti-war as any other people. Maybe they can’t protest right now, can’t speak up because of the regime. But this is how they can signify support for the anti-war sentiment,” says Mohamad Ali.

And before signing off, the filmmaker adds another reason why Father’s Footsteps needed to be screened in Russia. “The film is set in Syria but it could be a story from anywhere. This could well be the story of a Ukrainian child. And that is why I felt we needed to go to Russia,” he says.