When FRONTLINE filmmaker Olly Lambert sat to interview Jamal Maarouf, a Syrian rebel commander, he did not anticipate that bombs from government jets would begin to fall just 300 meters away.

Though the first blast knocked him to the ground, Lambert kept his camera rolling. He spent the next hour documenting the impacts of the Oct. 28, 2012 bombing of al-Bara, a village in Idlib province an hour south of Aleppo. The result is a rare, immersive portrait of the immediate aftermath of Syrian government air strikes on a civilian population.

FRONTLINE has condensed the footage into this 36-minute digital feature, vividly narrated by Lambert. It captures the chaos on the ground as villagers try to rescue family and friends trapped under the rubble, the bombing’s effect on ordinary civilians whose lives literally have just been blown apart, the terrible fear when the government jets return for a second bombing run, and the ensuing calls for revenge that illustrate the country’s descent into a no man’s land of hatred, suspicion and terror.

“It’s only when you see things like this that you realize the real impact of civilian casualties in a civil war,” Lambert says about the scenes he witnessed. “When I first arrived in Syria, people would often say to me, ‘Here your life can end in a moment. Any minute now you could be dead.’ And at first I didn’t believe them, but certainly after an experience like this, it’s hard not to feel that they’ve got a point.”

CREDITS

FILMMAKER and NARRATOR

Olly Lambert

PRODUCER

Azmat Khan

EDITORS

Steve Audette

Mark Dugas

Christopher Swayne

SOUND MIX

Jim Sullivan

TRANSLATION

Omar Duwaji

DIRECTOR OF BROADCAST

Tim Mangini

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIST

Bill Rockwood

SENIOR DESIGNER

Evan Wexler

DIRECTOR OF NEW MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY

Sam Bailey

ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR FOR DIGITAL MEDIA

Sarah Moughty

DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL MEDIA/SENIOR EDITOR

Andrew Golis

DEPUTY EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Raney Aronson-Rath

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

David Fanning