Syria’s first Ramadan television season since the fall of Bashar Al Assad in December 2024 has unfolded under unusual scrutiny, as producers test the boundaries in a newly altered political landscape.
Few series have done so more forcefully – or more controversially – than Caesar: No Place, No Time, also distributed as Devil’s Prisons. Directed by Mustafa Safwan Naamo and described as “inspired by true stories”, the production draws on testimonies from detention centres during the Assad era.
Structured as 10 separate trilogies and featuring a high-profile cast including Saloum Haddad, Ghassan Massoud, Fayyaz Qazq, Samer Ismail and Sabah Jazairi, it arrived as one of the season’s most prominent titles. Within days of its premiere, however, it had become the subject of a mounting public backlash.
The dispute has centred less on whether Syria’s prison system should be depicted on screen and more on timing and intent. Does dramatising the detainees' experiences during Ramadan risk turning unresolved trauma into prime-time spectacle before truth, accountability and closure are in place.
For some viewers, the controversy is less about representation than raw proximity to trauma.
Muhammad Al Douri, who lost his father in Sednaya prison, tells The National: “I watched the trailers and my heart broke when I saw the video of the detainees getting abused. We don’t even have justice yet, or closure, so why are we having to see this on our screens?”
Amid reports that the show had been pulled following public pressure, Naamo said “the series is continuing” in a statement. He denied claims that the Kuwaiti platform Shasha, which aired the first six episodes, had cancelled it.
The controversy deepened after the Homs Bar Association announced its intention to file a lawsuit over what it described as an insult to the Homsi revolutionary figure Abdul Baset Al Sarout
Zuhair Al Mulla, the show’s screenwriter, also addressed the backlash publicly. “We included scenes in which Bashar Al Assad was insulted, but these were later removed,” he said. He added that censors intervened in the script and language, including the use of coastal dialect “as an effort to preserve civil peace”.
The debate broadened further when actor Samer Kahlawi, who portrays an Assad-era officer in one of the trilogies, distanced himself from the final edit and apologised to viewers offended by scenes involving remarks about Sarout.
“We are documenting a historical phase. It was Major Yasar [his character] who was insulting Al Sarout, not me,” he said. Editing had removed some insults aimed at Assad while retaining those directed at Sarout, he said.
The series’ title has also fuelled criticism. By invoking “Caesar”, the production references the code name associated with Farid Nada Al-Madhan, a former Syrian military forensic photographer who defected in 2013 and smuggled out tens of thousands of images documenting torture and killings in regime prisons.
The Caesar Families Association issued a statement saying that the forcibly disappeared are “a historical trust” that cannot be bought and sold in the television production market.
Journalist and activist Wafa Mustafa similarly warned that disputes over symbolism risk overshadowing the central demands of families: truth-finding, justice and redress. “We do not want a drama that searches for the truth,” she said. “We want the truth itself.”
Naamo rejected claims that scenes insulting Assad had been cut and described the project as an attempt to approach a painful chapter of Syrian memory rather than exploit it. He acknowledged, however, the intensity of the reaction.
“The work touches wounds that have not healed and deals with a human memory that is still alive and painful for many Syrians,” he said.
As Ramadan dramas continue to unfold, the reaction to Caesar: No Place, No Time suggests that for many Syrians, the regime's prisons are not a closed chapter, but a living wound.
