The War Show is a unique close-up of war in Syria and personal road movie captured by Syrian radio host Obaidah Zytoon and her friends.  

How important is it for the film to have a large scale exposure at Venice and Toronto?
Miriam Nørgaard: It’s important for two reasons. Firstly, it’s super important to show what happened to the characters of this film, how they were treated. The bigger the festival, the bigger opportunity you get to denounce human rights abuses in Syria. It’s hard for the people in Syria to have a voice and there is so much suffering there. When a film raises those questions, then all we can hope is that it will have an impact on people and open up consciences and debates. Then for a filmmaker, it’s simply fantastic to be selected at A festivals.

When and how did you start working on The War Show?
Andreas Dalsgaard: Fridthjof Film had already started collaborating with Obaidah and her Syrian friends when I came on board, early 2015. I was asked if I could help put the film together, so that people involved would feel protected and could recognise themselves in the story. So I started a long process of interviews, looking through 100 hours of materials, trying to get a grasp of what Obaidah and her friends understood when looking at the material. It was a process of listening, breaking things down, rebuilding to build something that would feel true both on a factual and emotional standpoint. 

What was your first reaction when you saw this raw and exclusive footage from war in Syria and how civilians actually live under war time?
AD: What I felt is that it wasn’t just raw; it was filmed with a lack of intention, with a spur-of-the-moment feel; it wasn’t trying to impose a viewpoint. But there were incredibly strong meetings. That’s what struck me and my editor [Adam Nielsen].

The real power of the footage lies in those random moments. When Obaidah for instance meets a very young girl activist, there is a strong connection and a very human conversation starts. It was therefore quintessential for us to protect that postcard-like quality of the film, those moments with raw emotion.

Was it essential for you to show not only the Syrian uprising and repression from President Assad, but also the rise of extremism to give a full picture of the situation in Syria?
AD: When you look at the film, number one you do understand what people are escaping from. They are not refugees, simply human beings who could be your neighbour or a friend of yours. That human quality is very present in the film and it brings another depth to the understanding of this conflict. Secondly, it gives an understanding of what went wrong in Syria. It’s for logical and terrible reasons that things developed the way they did. When it comes to Isis - or in the case of the film Yabhat al-Nusra [the official Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria] - we understand in a way why it happened. Some Syrians join to survive, many are just confused. 

What were the biggest challenges on the film?
AD: To find truth across cultural divide. We’re dealing with a unique footage from a conflict that is the defining conflict of our decade. For me, it was a huge responsibility towards writing a piece of history. 

What do you hope the film will achieve?
AD: …I don’t know. Unfortunately, I’m not very hopeful regarding the conflict in Syria. It doesn’t look like it will improve in a near future, plus in Europe I don’t think we are tackling the refugee situation very well. I do hope however that the film will give a better understanding of why and what we’re in. 

When will the general audience in Denmark be able to watch it?
MN: The film will premiere in cinemas via Doxbio before airing on DR2. 

Last time I spoke to your company CEO Ronnie Fridthjof he mentioned that your focus is now on feature film and TV drama. Is this your last major documentary?
MN: Yes it will be our last international documentary for quite some time, coming out of our doc department. That doesn’t mean that we won’t produce other docs, but we will look for strong angles and unique material. That said, we are now applying our strong research tradition to feature film and TV dramas as well as using our experience in raising financing on the international market. 

We are currently working as minority-co-producers on the Finnish film Tom of Finland and on the Norwegian TV series Valkyrien, and Ronnie has a project called War & Love which will be co-produced with Germany.  Other projects include the TV dramas The Specialists written by Jesper Fink and Fesper Q. Rasmussen, and Mayday that I wrote with Norwegian showrunner/writer Christopher Grøndahl (Nokas).