Syrian Filmmakers Hail End of Assad Regime and Look to Rebuild Industry as an ‘Internationally Connected’ Community: ‘The War Is Finished, Let’s Go Back’

variety.com:

MAD Solutions — who left his native Syria for Cairo before the civil war — struck a more cautious note. “For me, the basic question in these matters is always: ‘Who owns the weapons?’ Because the weapons are not free.

So someone is behind it [Assad’s ouster],” he noted, citing the changing geopolitical scenario which saw Assad flee to Russia when he was no longer able to rely on political support from Iran, Russia and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia. “And of course, the idea of anyone using religion [for political purposes] scares me,” Karkouti went on to add, referring to the Islamist rebels, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham fighters, who have longtime ties to al-Qaida though their leader Golani has supposedly shed those ties and is now projecting an image of himself as a champion of pluralism and tolerance.

Government officials who have remained in Damascus after Assad fled, including Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi Jalali, have met with the rebels to discuss the power transfer.

Hassan Kattan, a cinematographer and documentary director who worked on powerful wartime short “One Day in Aleppo,” was also both happy and scared. “The future of Syria is a difficult question and to be honest we are afraid, because it’s a big responsibility for everyone who believes in freedom and the revolution that has toppled the Assad regime,” he said. “That was the first mission.