"Syria Mon Amour," the Japan title of "Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait," is a direct homage to Alan Resnais' 1959 classic antiwar movie "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and reflects a desire on the part of the two-person distribution team to put the film in a Japanese context. The original title, however, is derived from Simav — "silvered water" in Arabic — the first name of co-director Wiam Simav Bedirxan, who, living in Syria, filmed much of the movie's content.

As cinematic fare, "Silvered Water" is a hard sell: a documentary of the brutalities and casualties of Syrian War compiled from YouTube videos combined with Bedirxan's footage and edited by Syrian director Ossama Mohammed. No matter how hard you brace yourself, the film will shred your nerves, wring your heart dry and leave you enveloped by a sadness so pervasive you'll be left speechless.

There are teenagers and young men subjected to indescribable acts of atrocity, often filmed by the soldiers committing them; children's corpses, wrapped in sheets and awaiting cremation; animals, maimed by relentless bombings, wandering amid rubble. Testament to the immense cruelty capable by humankind and, to a lesser degree, the resilience of the human spirit, "Silvered Water" is without doubt a harrowing experience — but for anyone fortunate to be in an industrialized nation, it's an essential one.