On March 6, 2011, fifteen Syrian boys from a small farming town called Daraa painted graffiti proclaiming “Freedom, freedom, and freedom only,” and “Down with the corrupt [President] Assad.” The messages imitated what the boys had seen on al-Jazeera while watching broadcasts from uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. When the Syrian police apprehended and brutally tortured the boys, Daraa erupted in riots. It was the explosive beginning of a new chapter in the Arab Spring – the uprising against Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad. In The Regime, FRONTLINE producer Marcela Gaviria and the late two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid explore the extraordinary tension between the repressive Assad regime and the Syrian people that has given way to a violent rebellion.