Mohamad Blakah - Videographer

"It’s early December 2012, one year after I left my home and my city Damascus in Syria. More than a year had gone by while I had been waiting in exile. The once peaceful revolution had turned violent, being drawn into armed clashes by the regime. The number of casualties and detainees was rising, as violence took over. I was watching everything from outside of my country’s borders – a cursed country- helplessly. I decided to go to northern Syria, to the region around Idlib and Aleppo, where the Free Syrian Army had expelled all regime forces and had taken control. I was hoping to once again find my role in this revolution, just like before it had turned violent. But unlike the beginning of the revolution, we weren’t united, our demands and slogans not in unison as before, and I found myself unable to carry on for long. The peace that we were seeking had long been buried under rubble next to the bodies of our martyrs. Our dignity, that we were so proud of was quickly replaced by the humiliation of hunger and siege. I filmed many rebels during that time in northern Syria to document what was happening around us. Or maybe I filmed them just to remember - because nothing of what was happening around us happened without being clear to everyone. And because most of them were killed and became martyrs themselves."