Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Talal Derki returns to his homeland where he gains the trust of a radical Islamist family, sharing their daily life for over two years. His camera focuses on Osama and his younger brother Ayman, providing an extremely rare insight into what it means to grow up in an Islamic Caliphate.
Of Fathers and Sons is a remarkable piece of embedded documentary filmmaking. Talal Derki's extraordinary access to a jihadist family over two years yields footage of rare and harrowing intimacy — children being indoctrinated into radical ideology in real time. The cinematography is viscerally immersive, capturing domestic tenderness alongside ideological horror with unflinching, handheld proximity. Its novelty is exceptional: there is virtually no other documentary that achieves this level of insider access to the everyday life of an ISIS-adjacent household, making it a singular and deeply unsettling work. The plot follows a loose observational structure that occasionally meanders, and the ending, while sobering, doesn't fully crystallize the emotional weight the film has built. As a documentary, 'acting' is replaced by the authenticity of subjects, which is undeniably compelling if not conventionally rateable. The film's reputation as one of the most important war documentaries of the decade is well-earned.