Syrian TV industry reclaims stage after war

Ramadan in the Arab world is a time of fasting and prayer, but it brings another beloved tradition: the much-anticipated TV drama series shot each year to be aired during the holy month.

After breaking their daily fast, families gather to watch their picks from the year's crop of soap operas and political and historical dramas, snacking on sweets and nuts and drinking tea and coffee until late in the evening.

The most anticipated productions are often Syrian. While Egypt is known for its movies and Lebanon for its pop singers and composers, Syria's TV series for decades have been seen as the gold standard in the region.

As the country emerges from 14 years of civil war, more than a year after insurgents brought the authoritarian Bashar Al Assad dynasty to an end, Syria's TV industry is seeking its footing in the new order.

In the Assad years, when political expression was strictly curtailed, "television became the main sort of platform for freedom of expression and also for employment for artists and intellectuals," an area where they could subtly push boundaries, said Christa Salamandra, a professor of anthropology at Lehman College and the City University of New York who has researched Syrian drama.

In 2011, mass anti-government protests were met by a brutal crackdown and spiraled into civil war.

After that, "the industry fractured," Salamandra said. "Creatives went into exile - or they stayed, but it split."

Since Assad's fall, actors and directors formerly divided along political lines are working together again. Series about once-taboo topics, like torture in Assad's notorious prisons, are being shot inside Syria.

But like everything in the new Syria, the postwar trajectory of TV drama has been complicated.

On a chilly day the week before Ramadan, a television crew had transformed a street in central Aleppo into something magical.

In the background, collapsed buildings were a reminder that the city had been a central battleground in Syria's civil war, but the cameras had transported the street back to a more innocent age.

Classic 1970s cars and a horse-drawn court lined it as a vendor wearing a tarboush hat sold sahlep, a sweet drink of hot thickened milk and spices.

The series, "Al-Souriyoun al-Aada" ("The Syrian Enemies"), is based on a novel of the same name that was banned during Assad's time because of its focus on dark moments in Syria's history, including the "Hama massacre" of 1982.

In the small-screen version, Yara Sabri, a prominent actor who left the country for years due to her opposition to Assad, appears as the mother of a troubled young man from an Alawite village who will become a major player in the country's oppressive security apparatus.

Associated Press