Los Angeles (AFP)

Children have fun near their homes in the arid and dusty landscapes of northern Syria. Their game is nothing ordinary: they use a bomb as a balloon.

The scene is one of the most chilling of "Jihadists from father to son", the latest documentary of the director Talal Derki on the daily of jihadists in his native Syria, broadcast next Tuesday at 20:50 on Arte.

"I saw my 6-year-old boy through the lens of the camera," he told AFP in Los Angeles about this "who broke his heart" scene .

The filmmaker followed for more than two years an Islamist family from a war-torn region near the border with Turkey, mainly interested in children to follow their process of radicalization.

The result is a dark and disturbing 98-minute documentary that offers a rare dive into the world of jihadists.

Released in November 2018 in the United States, the film was nominated for the Oscars and won the award for best documentary Sundance festival, where Talal Derki had already been awarded in 2014, in the same category, for "The Return to Homs ".

"Jihadists from father to son" follows the footsteps of Abu Oussama - one of the founders of the al-Nusra Front, the former Syrian branch of Al Qaeda - while He prepares for jihad two of his eight sons: Usama (13), as the hero of his father, Osama bin Laden, and Ayman (12), in reference to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of Al Qaeda.

Based in Berlin, Talal Derki says he won the trust of Abu Oussama posing as a war photographer acquired the jihadist cause. He has, over two and a half years, stayed many times with the family, sharing his most intimate moments.

- From innocent souls to jihadists -

The horror of documentary does not stem from violence, blood or other morbid scenes. It imposes itself especially on the spectator by the brutal transformation of the children, from innocent souls to jihadist fighters.

"It's a movie that makes you understand how the brain works," says the 42-year-old Syrian, who is still haunted because he has seen it. "I continue to recover, I have to take pills to sleep, because otherwise I have nightmares."

From his restless nights surely goes back another scene of the film in which one of the children proudly announces to his father having killed a small bird.

"We put his head down and cut it off, as you did, father, to this man," says the boy.

The desert environment, plowed by the bombs, and the invisibility of the women of the family add to the feeling of despair that runs through the film.

"Women are the biggest victims in this society," said Talal Derki. "I've been there for two and a half years and I do not even know what the mother of these children looks like, we did not pronounce her name and I never heard her voice."

After documenting, in "The Return to Homs", the Syrian revolution and the brutal repression of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, "Of Fathers and Sons" was, according to him, a logical new step in trying to explain the chaos in which today finds Syria.

"We have to use our weapon, the cinema, to show what's really going on, who these people are, and the brainwashing they are doing to people," he denounces.

"We must think before bombing a region, before letting a dictator kill his own people with heavy weapons."

After filming the latest footage of his documentary, Talal Derki had his right arm tattooed and pierced his ear so he would not be tempted to infiltrate the jihadists again. "It's my way of making sure I will not go back."

© 2019 AFP