After making the boots-on-the-ground war documentary war series My Fighting Season and The Fighting Season for Audience Network, Ricky Schroder teamed up again with cameraman/producer River Rainbow Hagg to zoom in on the crisis in Syria.
“I wanted to do a third (documentary) program, but there wasn’t an opportunity to embed with the U.S. military, at least not officially,” said Schroder about his upcoming untitled Syria doc.
In the series, Hagg witnesses the war being raged by ISIS in northern Syria in an area known as Rojava and documents his experiences with a coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters and western medical support. Essentially, there are 300 foreign fighters assisting the Kurdish, 100 of them American and 30 of those wounded with zero medical supplies shipped into the area.
“It was house by house fighting, block by block, much more intense than anything I experienced before,” explained Hagg at this afternoon’s TCA session, “The Kurds are trying to set up a democracy and set up state rights.”
Schroder’s interest turned to the army following his time on NYPD Blue. He even tried to enlist, but failed the physical portion. This brought him to executive producing The Fighting Season in 2014 for Audience.
Says the former Silver Spoons child star, “I wanted to have the experience of what it was like to be in a war zone. Afghanistan is America’s longest war. It changed the world, and many families’ lives. I find it rewarding to tell soldier and heroic stories.”
Audience Network’s Syria doc series will air in May.
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