To make his new harrowing documentary “Of Fathers and Sons,” filmmaker Talal Derki had to win the trust of a family led and strongly influenced by their jihadist father, creating a portrait of a family bound together by both love and violent Islamist fervor.
“I spent many years…in the war zone, and I met a lot of people,” Derki told TheWrap’s Beatrice Verhoeven. “I get experience with how to pretend and how to present yourself, what to say…I tell them I’m a war cameraman and that I want to learn about religion.”
The subject of the film is Abu Osama, a father of eight and the leader of Al-Nusra, the Syrian arm of Al-Qaeda.