We Are The Giant

You’ll walk out of this electrifying documentary about the Arab Spring with your blood boiling. Using a mix of interviews and unflinching on-the-ground footage, ‘We Are the Giant’ profiles three groups of activists in the Middle East organising on Twitter and dreaming of freedom. Their stories don’t end happily. Wrecked by grief, a Libyan man who’s lived in America for years tells how his 21-year-old son, born and raised in the US, joined the fight against Gaddafi in Benghazi. Suicidally brave, he told his dad, who begged him to go home: ‘If everyone leaves, who will fight for the revolution?’ In Syria, two men, Ghassan and Motaz, insist on peaceful resistance to dictator Bashar al-Assad. Today, they are on the wanted lists of Assad and Islamic State. In Bahrain, Maryam and Zainab, two incredibly courageous sisters in their twenties, become opposition leaders while their human-rights activist dad is tortured in prison. The picture in all three countries is unrelentingly grim – so much blood spilt and so many lives wasted. It’s tempting to come away feeling hopeless as well as angry. Has people power failed? But then you watch these interviews: accounts from young people who have found their voices and a taste of freedom, and want more. Maybe this is just beginning.