Film
Of Fathers and Sons
- Drama
- Very dark
- Slow-burning
Talal Derki's extraordinary documentary follows a jihadist family in Syria over two years, centering on the filmmaker's relationship with Osama, a teenager caught between his father's radical ideology and his own dawning doubts. It's an unflinching, intimate portrait of radicalization and its costs—less polemic than anthropological, less angry than sorrowful. Essential viewing for anyone trying to understand how extremism reshapes families from within.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you want to understand how ordinary family life bends around militant ideology, and you're willing to sit with patient, observational filmmaking that lets the household speak for itself.
Skip it if you need a clear narrative spine or outside commentary to follow events, since this stays close to one household and offers little context beyond what it shows you.
What it asks of you: Close, unhurried attention carries it across about ninety-nine minutes, with long quiet stretches of domestic routine and a steady gaze that rarely cuts away.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
My Octopus Teacher2020
A filmmaker returns to his homeland—in this case, the ocean—and builds trust with a subject over time. Both are meditations on what we gain and lose through deep observation. Deeply moving without ever feeling manipulated.
But It's gentler and more introspective than *Of Fathers and Sons*, which some viewers find disappointingly slow if they're after more narrative momentum.
The Square2017
An unflinching documentary about the Egyptian revolution that doesn't shy from showing how idealism curdles into chaos. Like Derki's film, it trusts the camera to reveal contradiction without hectoring the audience.
But It's long, densely layered, and sometimes bewildering in its refusal to offer easy moral clarity. Exhausting in the best way, but exhausting.
For Sama2019
Waad al-Kateab's personal documentary from inside Aleppo during the siege. Raw, harrowing, and structurally built around a mother's love rather than journalistic distance. Shatters you in a different register, same territory.
But Far more emotionally devastating than *Of Fathers and Sons*. This is not a thinking film; it's a feeling film, and some people cannot watch it twice.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Of Fathers and Sons
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Come and See1985
Both follow a young protagonist through an ideological institution that unmakes childhood. Both refuse to look away. One is documentary observation; the other is fevered nightmare—the same story told as testimony and as requiem.
Elem Klimov's Soviet masterpiece about a boy recruited into a partisan unit during WWII. Where *Of Fathers and Sons* observes radicalization, this one *shows* its cost in real time—the slow annihilation of innocence. Formally perfect and nearly unwatchable.
But Made in 1985, it's visually harsh and the sound design is deliberately assaultive. Many people have to stop watching. It's not a meditation; it's a wound that won't close.
More like this (6)
Winter Song2023
Shot in Syria during ceasefire, Derki explores how civilians navigate the wreckage of war. Quieter than *Of Fathers and Sons*, more poetic—same eye for how people endure, different subject.
But Its quietness can feel slight if you're looking for the moral and political intensity of *Of Fathers and Sons*. Some find it too beautiful for what it depicts.
The Act of Killing2012
Indonesian death-squad leaders reenact their murders on film. Formally experimental and morally vertiginous—like *Of Fathers and Sons*, it gives voice to the perpetrator and trusts the viewer to sit with the discomfort.
But Watching it feels complicit. The methodology is controversial—some argue it gives atrocity a glamour it shouldn't have. Difficult and long.
Midnight Traveler2019
An Afghan filmmaker and his family document their own journey as refugees, using only phones and hidden cameras. A counterpoint to *Of Fathers and Sons*—the voice of someone fleeing rather than trapped.
But The technical constraints of phone footage can be visually frustrating. The intimate horror might hit differently depending on your distance from the subject.
HyperNormalisation2016
Adam Curtis traces how power works through ideology and narrative. Not a traditional documentary, but it shares *Of Fathers and Sons*' interest in how people come to believe dangerous things.
But It's essayistic, elliptical, and sometimes infuriating in its refusal to arrive at conclusions. Curtis's voice-over can feel like an autocrat's monologue.
The Eternal Memory2023
Both films are made by someone returning to a homeland transformed by ideology and violence. But where Derki films a family choosing radicalism, Mallet films a couple trying to remember themselves against erasure. Same wound, opposite impulse—documentation as rescue rather than witness.
Marilú Mallet documents her husband Gustavo, a Chilean filmmaker losing his memory to Alzheimer's while living under the shadow of dictatorship. A love story, a political act, and a meditation on what we preserve when everything slips away. Quietly devastating.
But It moves between intimate moments and political context in ways that can feel disjointed. The subject matter—cognitive decline—is relentless and offers no narrative relief.
Nightcrawler2014
Both examine how someone comes to see the world through a lens—Derki's camera, Lou Bloom's camcorder—and how that lens reshapes their conscience. One is documentary truth; the other is fictional poison. But the mechanism of corruption is the same.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays a freelance videographer in LA who builds a career on violence. It's a narrative film, not a documentary, but it's the dark-mirror inverse of Derki's project—examining how someone becomes radicalized by media and capitalism rather than ideology. Morally toxic and impossible to look away from.
But It's a thriller with a seductive sociopath at the center, which means some viewers worry it romanticizes its protagonist. Also: it's visibly *acted*, which breaks the spell *Of Fathers and Sons* casts through its proximity to reality.
People
Cast
- Abu OsamaSelf
Directing
- Talal DerkiDirector
Production
- Talal DerkiCo-Producer
- Dan CoganExecutive Producer
- Geralyn White DreyfousExecutive Producer
- Jenny RaskinExecutive Producer
- Ansgar FrerichProducer
- Eva KemmeProducer
- Hans Robert EisenhauerProducer
- Tobias SiebertProducer