Each day children trudge the muddied village paths to go to school, but as Step by Step makes painfully clear, their only real escape from crushing poverty is to join the army. A frightening, captivating and insightful portrait of how the Baath regime transformed generations of peasants into citizen-soldiers and sent the poor in droves to provincial cities as migrant laborers. This short film was Mohammad's graduation project at the VGIK film school and foretells his cinematic style and thematic obsession with the language of violence in society. The original print has been restored and digitized, and subtitled in English especially for this program.

Directed by Oussama Mohammad
Camera: Hanna Ward
Music: Abdellatif Abdul-Hamid