The Long Season
Documentary exploring life inside a bustling Lebanese refugee camp.
Nine million Syrians have left their homeland since the breakout of the war. Most of them have ended up in camps like Madjal Anjar in the Beqaa Valley, just over the border in Lebanon. Some of the camp’s inhabitants rent land to cultivate crops, while others earn a little toiling in the fields of a local farmer who treats them with contempt. The rest of the time they spend waiting for the bus that brings goods and news from Raqqa. In conditions such as these, frustration rapidly turns to conflict, traumatized children become aggressive and women’s freedom of movement is very restricted.
Director Leonard Retel Helmrich uses his hallmark single-shot cinema vérité style to probe deep into life in the camp. The fluid motion of the camera – sometimes high in the air, sometimes gliding just above ground level – allows him to get extremely close to the camp’s inhabitants, bringing home the human drama behind the abstract number of nine million. (source: www.idfa.nl)