Hell on Earth, a Film about Syria

by Stanley Heller, Promoting Enduring Peace administrator

On Wednesday, Dec. 13, Promoting Enduring Peace will be showing the film Hell on Earth in the Marett Seminar Room of the New Haven Free Public Library (133 Elm St.) at 6 p.m. The room is in the back of the library’s first floor. Admission is free.

David Denby in the New Yorker describes the film in this way, “[…] a Syrian family tries to make sense of the disaster that has overtaken it. Two brothers, Radwan and Marwan Mohammed, along with their wives and small children, are holed up in a cement room somewhere outside of Aleppo, forced by Bashar al-Assad’s government troops and then by ISIS to flee the city. As the film chronicles with relent-less power, Syria, outside the family’s miserable shelter, has fallen into chaos.” It was produced by National Geographic and it’s co-produced by Sebastian Junger who made the classic documentary Restrepo, about an American combat unit in Afghanistan.

Some day before the event people are encouraged to see the exhibit at the Whitney Humanities Center by Mohamad Hafez. A noted architect, this Syrian has been making streetscapes of Syrian ruins, highlighting the situation of refugees. The Center is at 53 Wall St. It has limited viewing times, 3-5 p.m. Monday and Wednesday.