A person living in Syria has very limited options for watching movies or series. This is primarily due to the restricted access to platforms such as Netflix as a result of the American and European sanctions imposed on the country.
The difficulty in accessing viewing platforms has subsequently popularized websites specialized in pirating movies. However, these websites are generally not user-friendly and can be cumbersome to navigate.
For example, the Ahwak TV website, which specializes in screening movies and series, takes you to a new window whenever you click an option. Patience is a must. Sometimes windows pop up claiming you won a prize. Other windows may display explicit content. If you persist in your efforts and eventually manage to play the desired video, be careful not to touch the screen, as it might open a new window again.
As a Syrian living in Syria, you would come to appreciate Ahwak TV, EgyBest, and other websites pirating movies and series, as they offer a way to watch movies you have no access to otherwise.
Mission Impossible
In most countries, you can simply use your laptop or turn the TV on to watch a series or movie on Netflix, OSN, or any other platform. Things are a lot more complicated in Syria due to European and American sanctions, which also ban access to a movie platform.
As a result, the only available option is pirating, either by downloading the material through Telegram or purchasing copied DVDs, a product with a well-developed market in Syria.
Despite having become used to it, Caroline, a civil engineering student in Homs, claims that the quality of the movies and TV shows she watches through Telegram groups is extremely poor.
In addition to Dramas7 and Shahid4u, one of the most popular platforms for pirated movies and TV series is EgyBest. The website is well-liked among Syrians as it is well organized and only has few ads. Unfortunately, it was shut down on many occasions.
“When the EgyBest website was shut down, I felt upset and angry, as it was more or less my only window to watch movies,” said Reem (a pseudonym). “I watched series and movies almost daily, even if they were of poor quality.”
Omar, a fourth-year architecture student in Damascus, is trying to watch as many movies as he can. He has a passion for cinema and plans to study directing.
“For someone who loves cinema and directing, watching a movie is impossible with the power outages and poor internet we face,” he said. “The last movie I watched was an hour and a half long, but it took me two and a half hours to watch because of the slow internet.”
Omar and his friends have tried to solve these problems by either exchanging the movies they were able to download amongst each other or just endure the advertisements that interrupt the movie dozens of times. Omar gave up on the idea of watching a movie several times because of such difficulties.
Access Denied
Those who have left Syria and experience Netflix, or other platforms, realize how different and easy life can be abroad.
“When I accessed Netflix for the first time, after my friend shared her account with me, I felt like I entered a whole new world,” said Sarah, who moved to Lebanon a few years ago. “I was astounded, and ever since, whenever I begin a new movie, I reflect on how simple life is here, and I feel bad for my family in Syria, where my brothers spend countless hours watching one movie, and have to wait over three hours to download a single episode in a series.”
Access to Netflix is blocked in five countries – Syria, Russia, China, North Korea, and the Republic of Crimea. Nevertheless, internet giants in Syria found the app difficult to access even before the war in the country. The situation worsened due to US sanctions that banned the export, sale, or supply of products, software, technology, and services without prior US government clearance. Today, there are many blocked platforms, including Apple, Amazon, TikTok and Zoom.
The slow internet is the first obstacle Syrians face. With a rate of 14.7 megabytes per second, Syria is ranked last in the Arab world in terms of downloading speed via cellular internet, according to the 2022 Speedtest Global Index.
In many Syrian regions, the Internet is absent for hours in a row. The poor service was compounded by the government’s decision to raise fees for mobile and landline communication, presenting an additional challenge for users.
Piracy as a partial solution
“Piracy has managed to compensate for the lack of and difficulty in accessing famous streaming platforms,” film director Firas Muhammad told Daraj. “Despite the strong countermeasures, there is always an illegal way to access films, especially cinematic ones, through Arabic platforms that get blocked and reopened periodically. Torrent also provides high-quality films. But the problem is that it provides them quite a long time after they premiere at international festivals.”
For Firas, a bigger problem is the absence of movie theaters and their atmosphere. On the one hand, theaters have become scarce, and on the other, they offer very little international movies, unlike neighboring countries such as Lebanon and Egypt.
“In Syria, we are outside the global marketing and distribution schemes,” said Firas. “Even the cinema clubs that used to obtain copies through various cultural centers are now unable to do so. Sometimes they have to wait for pirated copies to be made available or recent films to leak from festivals to watch the content.”
Firas said there is always a way to get the required movies, but what influences cinema culture goes beyond mere following up: “I think that the interest in cinema will further decline as long as the method of reception remains the same, in addition to local television drama dominating it. Cinema culture accumulates and becomes part of the accumulated knowledge about life. I think this is what is missing in Syria now.”
The inability of Syrians to watch a series on Netflix platform reflects their suffering in the most basic aspects of their daily lives, which increases with every need, from the access to reliable Internet to the ability to afford food.
