Nineteen-year-old Basset is the goalkeeper for the Syrian national soccer team. When revolution breaks out, the charismatic young man becomes an iconic protest leader and singer. His songs reflect his dream of peaceful liberation from Assad's brutal regime.
Osama is a 24-year-old media activist and pacifist wielding his camera to document the revolution. But when the army cracks down and their beloved Homs becomes a bombed-out ghost town, these two peaceful protesters take up arms and transform into renegade insurgents, with devastating results.
"This is Homs, but I don't know where I am," Basset says with characteristic joviality as he wanders through the destroyed buildings and rubble-filled streets of the city. They are the streets Basset and Osama grew up in, now a barren battlefield. In fractured homes, discarded living rooms speak of thousands of disrupted lives. Osama is disorientated by this completely new reality, "like an immigrant discovering a new city."
Primal and visceral, this extraordinary film dives into the reality of the Syrian resistance with a frenzied immediacy. Through a remarkable intimacy it captures the dreaded rite of passage of two friends and a haunting battle cry for justice.