In the early days of the Syrian uprising, Daham Alasaad was working as a tour guide in his native Palmyra, leading a group through the ruins of the ancient city. When a tourist handed him a camera to record a few snapshots, the guide inadvertently captured scenes of a peaceful demonstration against the regime of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad. Unexpectedly, the video went viral. And before he knew it, Alasaad was fleeing for his life.
It was the start of a remarkable journey that found Alasaad traveling from Syria — which would soon find itself in the throes of a more than decade-long civil war — to safe haven in Europe, where he began documenting efforts to bring Syrian war criminals to justice. Those efforts form the framework of his debut documentary feature “Ashes,” which Alasaad will be presenting in the Pitching Forum at the Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival, which runs March 5 – 15.
“Ashes” is produced by Bård Kjøge Rønning and Fabien Greenberg of Antipode Films, the Norwegian outfit behind Academy Award winner “No Other Land,” in co-production with Céline Nusse of France’s Zadig Productions and Alhumam Alasaad of new Syrian production company Bel Studios. It is currently in the early stages of production, with Alasaad hoping to wrap principal photography later this year.
Speaking to Variety at the Thessaloniki festival, the director explained how his film — spanning the better part of a decade across both Europe and Syria — is a probing exploration of the pursuit of justice that is nevertheless rooted in the personal histories of countless Syrians like him.
“‘Ashes’ began as a personal need to document this absence, through my story and the stories of others who carried their trauma across borders,” he said. “What haunted me most was not only the loss of my home and identity, but the absence of justice — the sense that Syrians were being erased without accountability.”
Alasaad’s own journey began with his desperate flight from Palmyra, joining 20 fellow travelers and setting off into the Syrian desert on foot, where they walked some 200 miles until they reached the border with Jordan.
Among the first Syrians to flee to the neighboring kingdom, they were settled in a small refugee camp, where Alasaad began using his digital camera to document daily life. Soon he was taking formal classes in journalism, and within a year he had moved to Turkey, traveling across the Syrian border to cover a civil war that by 2013 was in full swing.
Before long he was living in Denmark, where he continued to document the war for Danish media, while also traveling to Greece and Turkey to cover the growing refugee crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean. The work, however, left him frustrated, uncertain of just how much his reporting could accomplish.
“I was searching all the time for justice. What is the meaning of justice? How can we achieve justice?” the director said. “We are far away from home. Is what I’m doing justice?”
A few years later, while living in Paris, Alasaad heard the story of Amjad Job, a young Syrian lawyer and former detainee at Al-Khatib prison who’d survived torture under the infamous colonel and intelligence officer Anwar Raslan. Years later, living in exile, he unexpectedly encountered Raslan at a supermarket in Berlin, where the former torturer was living freely. Thus began Job’s tireless pursuit to bring the colonel to justice.
Alasaad traveled to Germany to document Job’s work as he collected witness testimonies and evidence of war crimes thousands of miles from where they were perpetrated. Raslan would eventually be tried and convicted of crimes against humanity, making history as the first official from the former al-Assad regime to face justice for the atrocities he committed during the war.
It was the start of a broader effort to track Syrian war criminals hiding across Europe, something that Alasaad admitted “gave me more of a purpose in life.” “I didn’t have a vision of what justice means. I’m living day to day,” said the director. “But when I met the guys who are pursuing war criminals, I’m like, ‘This is bigger than me.’”
Five years into filming “Ashes,” in December 2024, the story took an unexpected twist when the al-Assad regime suddenly fell. The director was on one of the first flights to Damascus, with Job following shortly thereafter, joining the thousands of Syrians returning from exile to sort through the wreckage of the war.
Not long after arriving, Alasaad followed Job as he returned to the very prison where he was once tortured. There they discovered millions of documents and hidden records that could potentially reshape Syria’s justice system, exposing secret chains of command within one of the most brutal regimes in modern history.
“Ashes” is a personal exhumation of the past, and the lives that were lost — or utterly transformed — by the brutality of the al-Assad regime. But it is a film that is also squarely focused on the project of rebuilding as it tries to imagine what type of nation might emerge from the ruins of a Syria devastated by war.
“Justice is the only way to make peace,” Alasaad insisted. “If there is no justice, there is no future.”
The Thessaloniki Documentary Festival runs March 5 – 15.
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