Republic of Silence review – disorienting three-hour doc plays more like news footage B-Roll

For a documentary to demand three hours of your time – as Diana El Jeiroudi’s Republic of Silence does – it has to have a hell of a hook to hold your attention. Unfortunately, this epically long, 12-years-in-the-making film simply doesn’t compel enough to justify the investment, a hyper-personal look at the war in Syria that is presented in such an unadorned manner that it more closely resembles extended B-Roll footage from a news report than an actual movie.

Spanning from El Jeiroudi’s childhood in Iraq – cruelly interrupted by the Iran-Iraq War – to her current life in Germany with her partner, fellow filmmaker Orwa Nyrabia, Republic of Silence has an impressive scope befitting its mammoth runtime, but is put together in a deeply patience-testing way. There is no narration, whilst (often very repetitive) scenes take place out of a discernible order, skipping back and forth through time in an almost free-associative way. One minute you’re in the midst of Bashar Al-Assad’s war against his own people in Homs, the next you’re back in Europe watching Nyrabia pick out clothes for a conference.

There is a way to make this coldly disorienting approach work for a documentary – just look at Jessica Kingdon’s darkly mesmerising Ascension – but to do it with no formal flair or ambition at all just makes Republic of Silence a tough watch for all the wrong reasons. There are some genuinely powerful sequences when El Jeiroudi and Nyrabia’s sadness and frustration boil over into a seething but tragically impotent rage, but just as often as being affected you’ll find yourself wondering “haven’t I already seen this?”

A substory about a doctor investigating incest-produced genetic abnormalities in rural Syria is easily the most fascinating element but never ends up gelling with the rest of the film around it in a satisfying way. As a piece of reportage to dip in and out of, Republic of Silence is a rigorous and important piece of work, but as a film to sit through three entire hours of, it’s almost impossible to recommend.

Republic of Silence is released on 23 December on True Story.