While Syria’s press is controlled, its entertainment sector is pushing boundaries few Arab countries dare touch, tackling issues like the treatment of women in Muslim countries, and the hot-potato topic of terrorism.
One of Syria’s foremost directors, Najdat Anzour, said, “I feel as a Syrian or as a Muslim I have to tell the truth to the people. I have to tell the generation what is right and what is wrong through drama because Syrian drama is very successful. It’s the No. 1 everywhere in the Arab world. I think the message will deliver in a proper way through Syrian drama.”
Anzour is working on a series for Ramadan, the Muslim holy month which for television networks is the equivalent of “Sweeps Week” in the United States, when ratings count more than ever.
It is a month when audiences are home and families gather together to watch television. It is also the time when lots of directors go for a bit of shock value, to get people and governments thinking and talking about sensitive topics.
“The drama is very important. Drama is the best way because it enters to every house every day, free of charge, so they can have a lesson every day for one hour, imagine that!”
Anzour’s series dramatizes forced marriage and other vivid examples of mistreatment of women. He invited us on set, and to his office. Anzour showed us previous series, one about the bombing of a residential compound in Saudi Arabia, which exposed the killers for what they really were. It vilified terrorism.
Meantime, there is a lighter note here too, and we went to the set of a wildly popular soap opera called “Bab al Hara” which hearkens back to a kinder, gentler time, when people in a neighborhood had their ups and downs and fights and dramas, but generally looked out for one another. It’s about Damascene life in the early part of the last century. But it is actually an MBC series, run on the Saudi-owned Middle East Broadcasting Company.
Syrian heartthrob Wael Sharaf plays the neighborhood tough guy, the protector. He talks about why people have such nostalgia for the olden days.
Sharaf says, “They all loved each other. You know what’s happened now in Iraq. I don’t like to say it, Sunni, Shi’ite…there wasn’t Sunni, there wasn’t Shia. Nobody asked.”
Sharaf takes us around the set, which, like movie lots in Los Angeles, is a tourist attraction. He is mobbed by Saudis and other visiting Arabs, asked to pose for pictures. I have heard that when Bab al Hara is on the air, the streets in Saudi go quiet, so popular is the drama.
Sharaf, who had actually gone to Ukraine to study as a doctor before heading home to what turned out to be his real calling, acting, is working on another series now, about corruption in the 80’s.
Back to Najdat Anzour, who is working feverishly for his upcoming series which will be rolled out this summer. He is curious what the reaction will be to his drama, which, while examining the treatment of women in Muslim societies, also cuts to their heart: religion.
“In the last three years I concentrate on religious subjects because of its effect on society and nobody can talk about it openly, in an open discussion. Everybody is scared to touch this, it’s a taboo. So I decided this year to open all the windows and all the doors. We don’t know the effect yet.”
What is clear is that there are many Syrian directors and movie stars who are anxious to make a big effect, a splash, this coming Ramadan.