The Suffering Grasses captures the competing impulses among opponents of the Assad regime at the onset of the Syrian revolution. While conditions in the country are continually changing and evolving, the film serves as an early, intimate view of Syria’s refugee crisis, and it highlights important strategic debates that are still playing out among groups resisting the regime.

Against the backdrop of the Arab Spring and the complicated politics of the region, this film explores the Syrian conflict through the humanity of the civilians who have been killed, abused, and displaced. In all such conflicts, it is civilians, women and children, families and whole communities, who suffer at the leisure of those in power. When elephants go to war, it is the grass that suffers.