Last Night in Syria

This Safe World film was produced back in June when Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal had been held in Evin Prison, Iran, for 11 months without charge.

Sarah Shourd was finally released on bail from Evin Prison on September 15th, into worldwide media attention. Shane and Josh remain in prison and their families do not know when they will see or hear from them again.

To find ways you can help free Shane and Josh...

Please go to: www.freethehikers.org

Follow Free The Hikers on Twitter: @freethehikers.

'Last Night in Syria' was the third film we made in support of the Free The Hikers Campaign.

It contains footage of Sarah Shourd and Shane Bauer, at the wedding of a friend Emily, in Damascus, Syria - 5 days before they were detained by Iranian authorities while hiking near the border of Iraqi Kurdistan & Iran

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Making the film

We were first told of the existence of the wedding film by Shon Meckfessel (aka 'the 4th hiker'), who was also at the wedding. He knew a film had been made and so he approached Emily and asked if we could see it. Emily and Basel's response was instant. Anything they could do to help....

When we got the film footage, we watched it over and over again. At first, searching for clips of Sarah, Shane and Josh. But the more we did this, the more we were drawn into the beauty and energy of the event itself....

Originally,the intention was simply to show footage of Sarah, Shane and Josh, but the fairy-tale beauty left us speechless. The footage arrived almost to the day of the first anniversary of our wedding. A wedding with a fairy-tale feel about it as well.

Interviewing the bride and groom

It was when Emily offered to do an interview with us, to talk about Sarah, Shane and Josh, that the film started to take on its own life.

Our interview with Emily and Basel took place over skype and lasted some two hours, during which the impact of the separation of the newly-weds was self-evident by the fact that Basel was talking from an internet cafe in Syria, and Emily from her home in England.

Although you do not hear Basel's voice on the film, the memory of his beautiful Arabic dialogue is ingrained in the making of it.

When we listened back to the recording, the sequence of Emily talking at the end of the skype call became the whole theme of the film.

ContrastS

In her words and her silences, you can feel the many emotions. It was this upon which the film was built.

We realised that the film was about contrasts. Contrasts of this happy wedding celebration, of Sarah, Shane and Josh's mothers' visit to Tehran a few days before and the images of the three prisoners.

As Emily says at the beginning of the film, "it feels unreal... like a film."

And this is how the film made itself, with a slightly unreal dreamlike quality

speechless

We must have watched it a hundred times now. And each time we do, it touches us the same way and leaves us speechless.

Speechless because of the reality of the situation. Speechless that the couple that we see dancing together, so much in love, are stuck inside the cold walls of a prison in Iran, with no end in sight for their release.

Chris Crowstaff (and Andrew Sampson)