Mahmoud Hassino in Mr. Gay Syria (Museum of Modern Art)

The battle for Syria may have drifted out of current headlines in the West, but filmmakers continue to tell the stories of Syrians suffering and in peril. The Museum of Modern Art’s 17th edition of its nonfiction film festival, Doc Fortnight, features three documentaries focusing on a region embroiled in a conflict that has now lasted longer than World War II. One follows gay Syrians desperate for personal freedom abroad, another on miserable refugees trapped and exploited in a Lebanon camp, and a wordless short film takes in the destruction of Aleppo, whose weary citizens survive the bombs falling around them and try to salvage the city as best they can. Tragically, those who remain in a war zone may seem better off than some of the escapees.

Mr. Gay Syria

Its title suggests house music and a bubbly trophy ceremony, but the actual Mr. Gay Syria contest in Ayse Toprak’s film is a low-key affair and occupies little of the story. A few cheerful interludes aside, this film portrays the dread of an existence in a part of the world where gays face overwhelming intolerance.

A Syrian refugee uneasily settled in Istanbul, Hussein has run from gunfire and from a vengeful family. The sad-eyed barber’s yearning for affirmation leads him to enter Istanbul’s Mr. Gay Syria pageant in the hope of boosting his self-esteem and obtaining a European visa. Hussein’s needs conflict with those of Mahmoud Hassino, the Berlin-based Syrian activist mounting the pageant. Hassino wants to publicize the event and send Hussein on to the next round in Malta, all in the name of heightening gay visibility. Hussein, though, has a secret that keeps him shunning from the spotlight. Mr. Gay Syria dwells on one happy gay couple, but that can’t dispel the lasting image of Hussein’s gaunt face.

Mr. Gay Syria is shot with cleaner, brighter style than many documentaries and unfolds its story skillfully. The Istanbul cityscape, vibrant and modern one instant, turns repressive and isolating the next, mirroring the mental state its characters inhabit.

The Long Season

The camera often runs low to the ground in director Leonard Retel Helmrich’s wrenching film, panning along dusty trash heaps or craning up mud-encrusted boots. It’s an apt metaphor for refugees bound to a bitter earth from which they can’t break free. Looser than Mr. Gay Syria, The Long Season takes cameras in and out of tents, fields, and markets in a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, capturing harsh family dynamics and ruined hopes.

Although far from comfortable, dwellers of the camp are at least safe from explosions and bullets. The cruelty they can’t escape is patriarchy, a force which allows grown men to use switches for striking small children in breadlines and harrying women on the job. In a central narrative, a man takes a second wife and officiously commands his pregnant first wife to welcome the younger bride. The first wife and her friends turn on the newcomer mercilessly. Exposure to their miserable quarrels over everything from okra preparation to bedroom arrangements feels suffocating and voyeuristic. Other plotlines provide little relief. Over and over we see scenes of women threatened, thwarted, and trapped.

While the camp aims to replicate the structures of normal life, family pressures—fathers, really—heavy-handedly veto potential romances and marriages. The specter of ISIS-held city of Raqqa hangs over the past and the future like a dark mirage. Helmrich (of the award-winning 2005’s Position Among the Stars) tries to inject a note of hope with scenes of kids in school, a couple getting married, and candy-colored balloons going off in the air, but the impression of a community menaced from without and tormented within dominates.

One Day In Aleppo

No one is arguing in One Day in Aleppo, Alibar Alibrahim’s wordless 24-minute chronicle of a city under siege. The film’s timing replicates the rhythms of battle, with quiet moments interrupted by massive bombardments and the sounds of sirens. One night shot captures a car being hit by a bomb from inside the car—a shocking example of cinema vérité and as real as it gets.

During the day, crews try to sweep up the damage, improvising repairs as they go along. Two men lovingly put together bowls for the city’s stray cats, who sidle up hopefully to sniff the food. Children decorate a white wall with bright images of flowers. And drone cameras reveal ruins of the city in eerily fluid motion. Only wisps of music adorn this film, whose wordlessness keeps petty conflict aside and creates a moving portrait of courage and solidarity.