William Bradley Pitt is an American actor and film producer. He is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award. As a public figure, Pitt has been cited as one of the most powerful and influential people in the American entertainment industry.
Janine di Giovanni is an author, journalist, and war correspondent currently serving as the Executive Director of The Reckoning Project. She is a senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, a non-resident Fellow at The New America Foundation and the Geneva Center for Security Policy in International Security and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She was named a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, and in 2020, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded her the Blake-Dodd nonfiction prize for her lifetime body of work. She has contributed to The Times, Vanity Fair, Granta, The New York Times, and The Guardian.
Angelina Jolie is an American actress, filmmaker and humanitarian. The recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award and three Golden Globe Awards, she has been named Hollywood's highest-paid actress multiple times.
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is a Canadian-Pakistani journalist, filmmaker and political activist known for her work in films that highlight gender inequality against women.
In the Land of Blood and Honey is a 2011 war drama film written, produced, and directed by Angelina Jolie, and starring Zana Marjanović, Goran Kostić and Rade Šerbedžija. The film, Jolie's first commercial release as a director, depicts a love story set against the background of the Bosnian War. It opened in the United States on December 23, 2011, in a limited theatrical release.
Matthew VanDyke is an American documentary filmmaker, revolutionary, and former journalist. He gained fame during the Libyan Civil War as a foreign fighter on the side of the uprising and as a prisoner of war.
Maleficent is a 2014 American dark fantasy adventure film directed by Robert Stromberg from a screenplay by Linda Woolverton. Co-produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Roth Films, the film is a live-action retelling of Walt Disney's 1959 animated film Sleeping Beauty, itself an adaptation of Charles Perrault's 1697 fairy tale, but tells the story from the perspective of the evil fairy Maleficent, played by Angelina Jolie, with Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, Lesley Manville, Brenton Thwaites, and Kenneth Cranham and have supporting roles.
The Battle of Aleppo was a major military confrontation in Aleppo, the largest city in Syria, between the Syrian opposition against the Syrian government, supported by Hezbollah, Shia militias and Russia, and against the Kurdish-majority People's Protection Units (YPG). The battle began on 19 July 2012 and was part of the ongoing Syrian Civil War. A stalemate that had been in place for four years finally ended in July 2016, when Syrian government troops closed the rebels' last supply line into Aleppo with the support of Russian airstrikes. In response, rebel forces launched unsuccessful counteroffensives in September and October that failed to break the siege; in November, government forces embarked on a decisive campaign that resulted in the recapture of all of Aleppo by December 2016. The Syrian government victory was widely seen as a turning point in Syria's civil war.
Unbroken is a 2014 American biographical war drama film produced and directed by Angelina Jolie and written by the Coen brothers, Richard LaGravenese, and William Nicholson. It is based on the 2010 non-fiction book by Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. The film stars Jack O'Connell as American Olympian and Army officer Louis "Louie" Zamperini and Miyavi as Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) corporal Mutsuhiro Watanabe. Zamperini survived in a raft for 47 days after his bomber ditched in the ocean during the Second World War, before being captured by the Japanese and being sent to a series of prisoner of war camps.
American actress Angelina Jolie made her screen debut in the comedy film Lookin' to Get Out (1982), acting alongside her father Jon Voight. Eleven years later, she appeared in her next feature, the low-budget film Cyborg 2 (1993), a commercial failure. She then starred as a teenage hacker in the science fiction thriller Hackers (1995), which went on to be a cult film despite performing poorly at the box-office. Jolie's career prospects improved with a supporting role in the made-for-television film George Wallace (1997), for which she received the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Television Film. She made her breakthrough the following year in HBO's television film Gia (1998). For her performance in the title role of fashion model Gia Carangi, she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Film.
By the Sea is a 2015 American romantic drama film written and directed by Angelina Jolie, and produced by and starring Jolie and Brad Pitt. Shot in August 2014 during Pitt and Jolie's honeymoon in Gozo, Malta, the film was released by Universal Pictures on November 13, 2015.
A Place in Time is a 2007 American documentary film directed by Angelina Jolie in her directorial debut.
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is a 2019 American fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by Joachim Rønning from a screenplay written by Linda Woolverton, Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster, it is a sequel to Maleficent (2014), with Angelina Jolie returning to portray the title role. Elle Fanning, Sam Riley, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, and Lesley Manville also return to their previous roles, with Harris Dickinson replacing Brenton Thwaites from the first film and Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ed Skrein, and Michelle Pfeiffer joining the cast as new characters. Set five years after Maleficent, the film sees the eponymous character face the neighboring kingdom's manipulated perception of herself as a villain, in addition to a subplot of the rise of an endangered, powerful fairy race known as the Dark Fae.
The White Helmets, officially known as Syria Civil Defence, is a volunteer organisation that operates in parts of opposition-controlled Syria and in Turkey. Formed in 2014 during the Syrian Civil War, the majority of the volunteers' activity in Syria consists of medical evacuation, urban search and rescue in response to bombing, evacuation of civilians from danger areas, and essential service delivery. As of April 2018, the organisation said it had saved about 114,000 lives, and that 204 of its members had lost their lives while performing their duties. They assert their impartiality in the Syrian conflict.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian Civil War from January to April 2016. Information about aggregated casualty counts is found at Casualties of the Syrian Civil War.
Robert Rippberger is an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter. He is the writer/director of Those Who Walk Away (film) starring BooBoo Stewart, the director/producer of Strive with Danny Glover, the director of the feature documentary Public Enemy Number One (film) from Executive Producer Ice-T, and director/producer of the Hulu released documentary 7 Days in Syria. Robert executive produced with Jason Blum the feature documentary Alive and Kicking. The film was sold to Magnolia Pictures and Netflix after its debut at the 2016 SXSW Film Festival, where it received a Grand Jury nomination.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian Civil War from May to August 2016. Information about aggregated casualty counts is found at Casualties of the Syrian Civil War.
Eva Karene Bartlett is a Russian-based American Canadian activist, journalist, commentator, and blogger who has propagated conspiracy theories in connection to the Syrian civil war, most notably the disproven allegation that the White Helmets stage rescues and "recycle" children in its videos.
The following are representations of the Syrian Civil War in popular culture.
Nujeen Mustafa is a Kurdish Syrian refugee and activist with cerebral palsy. She was raised in Aleppo, Syria, and gained attention after traveling 3,500 miles (5,600 km) by wheelchair, fleeing conflict in the Syrian Civil War, before arriving and resettling in Germany. She was listed as one of the BBC's 100 Women in 2018, and her story was featured on the television show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. In 2019 she became the first disabled person to brief the United Nations Security Council, and was the recipient of the Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism from Human Rights Watch. She has co-authored two books about her experiences. She resides in Wesseling where she attends a school for those with disabilities.
