We Are the Giant: Sundance Review

The rather abstract and complex subject of the Arab Spring is given a human face -- or,more correctly, a handful of articulate talking heads -- in the slickly assembled We Arethe Giant, from director Greg Barker (last year’s Emmy-winning documentaryManhunt).

The non-fiction film manages to both quickly place the Arab Spring in a wider socio-his-torical context of civil rights leaders and uprisings as well as zoom in on a few grippingindividual stories in three places in the Middle East where the wave of protests by thepeople toppled leaders or ignited excessively violent state repression: Libya, Syria andBahrain. A mixture of raw, first-hand footage, shot by protesters themselves, and moreself-possessed interviewees ensures that the chaos and sometimes lethal risks of protest-ing come across as strongly as the pressing socio-political reasons behind them and theeffects the events have had on the participants.

With a good part of the interviews in English and attractive (if perhaps a tad too poppy,seen the gravity of the subject) animated visuals as well as live-action footage, thisshould be on the radar of distributors and TV channels with an affinity for timely, main-stream-oriented documentaries.

The film focuses on stories from countries whose experiences of the Arab Springcouldn’t be more different, though some basic elements recur, including the non-violentorigins of all protests and the importance of social media, with Barker integrating revo-lution-themed Tweets on-screen throughout. The film starts with what should technical-ly be one of the major success stories of the Arab Spring: Libya, a country that managed,through a popular if quickly armed uprising (and U.S. and French military interven-tions), to remove its long-installed dictator, Muammar Gaddafi.

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But the enforcement of the will of the people comes at a high price, as the story ofOsama Ben-Sadik shows. The Libyan-American, who has homes in Virginia and Beng-hazi, lost his son, Muhannad,to the revolution at 21. “If everyone leaves, who will fightfor the revolution,” Muhannad asked his father. Both inspiring and sobering, this moststraightforward of the three stories suggests the human cost of the uprising as well as

how it was essentially driven by young people who, in turn, inspired others.

The film’s second part focuses on Syria, currently still stuck in a civil war. Activists Mo-taz Murad and Ghassan Yassin both stress that non-violent action is the only acceptableway to protest a government that uses senseless violence. But, like Nelson Mandelalearned in his ANC days, there comes a point where the violence the state uses tosquelch any peaceful anti-government protests comes at the cost of death and the re-maining options become either letting the government win or taking up arms and de-fending the cause.

The longest and most complex segment is dedicated to two Bahraini sisters, Zaineb andMaryam, who are the daughter of human-rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, cur-rently serving a life sentence for "terrorism." Some of the region’s biggest street protestsoccurred in Bahrain but human rights violations there -- including the arrest, tortureand even killing of peaceful protestors -- have been virtually ignored by the West, main-ly because of the country’s strategic importance (the U.S. fleet in the Persian Gulf usesBahrain as its basis), the documentary suggests.

Zaineb is an Arab Spring Twitter superstar with almost 50,000 followers for her @Angr-yArabiya account and has participated in countless non-violent protests, repeatedlyputting her life at risk and being locked up numerous times despite the fact she has (oras she explains, exactly because she has) a one-year-old daughter. Maryam escapedfrom Bahrain back to Denmark, where the sisters spent a part of their childhood aftertheir father was exiled. From Copenhagen, she’s been tirelessly trying to drum up me-dia and foreign government attention for what’s happening in her country in generaland with her family in particular (her being in the film feels as much a credit to her PRskills as to Barker’s research).

Apart from the compelling and fluidly told stories of the struggle of individuals with amuch more powerful entity, the state, what one takes away from We Are the Giant -- thetitle references a story Abdulhadi told his children in which the giant is the people andthe government a small man who has somehow managed to convince the giant he’s incharge -- is that the Arab Spring means something different for each individual but thatthe uprisings are rooted in a general desire for change and fairness that would allowroom for all voices to be heard. Barker here offers a courageous few as a starting point.

For the record: Co-producer Razan Ghalayini was responsible for the production ofsome of the footage in countries that Barker had no direct access to.

Venue: Sundance Film Festival (Documentary Premieres)Production companies: Motto Pictures, Passion PicturesDirector: Greg BarkerProducers: John Battsek, Julie Goldman, Greg BarkerCo-producer: Razan GhalayiniDirectors of photography: Muhammad Hamdy, Frank-Peter LehmannMusic: Philip SheppardEditor: Joshua AltmanSales: Submarine EntertainmentNo rating, 92 minutes