Damascus. The war is on the street. The apartment has become a sort of bunker where everything is organised depending on poverty. Every day is just a struggle to survive until tomorrow. The men are gone, only the women and the elderly are left. But some other men appear. Everyone retreats to the kitchen. Everyone except one young woman, alone on the other side of the door.
Ignore the awful title, this is a taut drama that puts a human face on Syria's humanitarian crisis. No cheap thrills or easy answers here, but plenty of gut-churning drama.
A few credible background details might have made Philippe Van Leeuw's melodrama more convincing, but this single-location movie tells us nothing specific about the Syrian conflict.
As a viewer one certainly leaves Insyriated with a more visceral understanding of what the Syrian conflict means for millions of families. Whether that is of any help to them, is a separate question.
A film so phony that its makers needed to coin a nonsense word to give it an appropriate title, the irksome Insyriated is the sort of feeble attempt at profundity that crops up in the face of every armed conflict.
It can sometimes feel like 'Insyriated' is awkwardly carrying the weight of an entire complicated conflict on its shoulders - but its sense of claustrophobia and immediacy can also feel horribly convincing.