Los Angeles (AFP)

Syrian filmmaker Firas Fayyad risked his life documenting the atrocities of Bashar al-Assad's regime, and was tortured in prison because of his films.

Despite nails torn and electric shocks, the first Syrian filmmaker to be nominated for the Oscars, for "The last men of Aleppo" (2017), on the daily life of first aiders, continues to want to tell this war that lasts for eight years and that the Turkish invasion in the north-east of the country at the beginning of the month has only revived.

His new documentary, "The Cave", screened in some cinemas in the United States from Friday, focuses on a young woman doctor who runs a clandestine hospital at the gates of Damascus, besieged for several years.

"She has seen so much, I do not think anyone alive - only Holocaust survivors - have seen so much," AFP Firas Fayyad told AFP. "This barbarian siege of Eastern Ghouta, the longest seat in Syria's modern history, nobody can imagine that."

Dr. Amani Ballour managed this underground network of tunnels and makeshift operating theaters in the rebel enclave, besieged since 2013 by the army.

She and her team were the first to respond to unprecedented bombing by the Syrian regime and Russia in 2018, until a chemical attack eventually forced them to flee.

Despite his heroic deeds, the director assures that it was not easy to convince that his story could interest the world.

"Why would they answer when there are other more important problems around us?" Asked Amani Ballour.

"I want to try," he recalls answering. "I do not think people will be able to look away from what you did."

The result is a provocative, 102-minute documentary shot by a team still living in Ghouta, showing life on and underground as bombs rain down and victims are rushed into stretchers and wheelbarrows.

For this film, produced by National Geographic and Danish Documentary Films, Firas Fayyad has been in daily contact with the on-site team, asking them to portray their lives confined to the model of the film of truth, without voiceovers or camera interviews.

In the midst of tragedy, scenes of daily life punctuate the film, such as this young nurse using creativity to make food for 150 people with very limited resources, or a secret birthday party with surgical gloves as balloons inflated.

- Hope -

Another reason pushed Firas Fayyad to place Amani Ballour at the center of her story: she was one of the few - perhaps the first - female director of a hospital in a deeply patriarchal Syrian society. It is seen in the film, taken to task by the husband of a patient.

The filmmaker, who grew up alongside seven sisters, is extremely aware of the harassment and violence suffered by women refusing to return to the ranks.

"I've heard women being tortured because of their gender," he says. "Sometimes I heard those sounds and it was like my mother or sister."

Amani Ballour was finally able to escape to northern Syria, then to Europe via Turkey, joining tens of thousands of other refugees.

The director escaped him by the border with Jordan, and now swings between his house in Copenhagen and his work in northern Syria.

Like many, he is alarmed by the recent Turkish offensive against a Kurdish militia in the north-east of the country.

"What happens is very, very disturbing because it prolongs the duration of the war, and there are more victims," ​​he is moved, predicting a new wave of exodus.

"Because I'm not there, I feel guilty," he adds. "What I feel is that we have to do something, make those voices heard, I hope to bring hope to these people."

© 2019 AFP