Ten years ago, the Arab Spring uprisings erupted across the Middle East and North Africa. In Syria, months of mass protests against Bashar al-Assad’s government in 2011 led to widespread unrest and a war that continued for years.
In 2012, with fierce daily battles taking place between regime soldiers and rebel fighters, documentary photographer Narciso Contreras spent five months in Aleppo, where he documented the front lines of fighting in what would become a main rebel stronghold.
It was late August 2012 when I crossed the Turkish border illegally into Syria for the third time. The month before, armed opposition groups had started mobilising, claiming that the impending fight for Aleppo would be remembered as “the mother of all battles”. And I planned to document it.
Alephia 2053, an Arabic-language animated feature set in a bleak future, has struck a chord in a region all too familiar with autocratic rule and bold, bloody resistance.
Released on YouTube on March 21, 10 years after the Arab Spring uprisings, the Lebanese-made 60-minute thriller has already garnered more than eight million views.
It is “proof that the movie reflects people’s thoughts”, says Rabih Sweidan, the film’s Lebanese creator and executive producer.
“Everyone sees it from their perspective and they see themselves and their communities in it,” Sweidan added.
The storyline, set in 2053 in the fictional Arab state of Alephia, follows a group of undercover agents plotting to take down hereditary ruler Alaa Ibn Ismail and his oppressive regime, described as the most tyrannical in the world.