Decades of activism, conferences, warnings, demonstrations and countless promises by politicians and businessmen seem to have little effect on the growing climate problems that now threaten the very…
Storming Paradise (2014)
Official selection
GOLDEN CALF
Competition
2014
Debut Competition
DUTCH
FILM FESTIVAL
2014
What drives young Western men to leave everyone and everything behind and journey to Syria to get involved in someone else’s struggle?
It all started with a radio broadcast. Mourad M. is the first Dutchman killed in Syria in the struggle against Bashar al Assad’s regime. He left for Syria with a group of friends to become a Jihad fighter. Filmmaker Floor van der Meulen knew some of them from her childhood neighborhood. The media portray these boys as vulnerable and derailed and who might be a terror threat. But is this image correct?
In order to understand why they feel called the urge to pick up arms and leave everything they know behind, Floor abandons her Western perspective to be able to see things through the eyes of the fighters.
Storming Paradise is a portrait of Dutch and Syrian fighters in a complex conflict, of young men who are finding their way in life.
A story about the hope, doubt and silence of a Syrian family in the Netherlands, who lost their youngest daughter in the Mediterranean Sea in 2014.
