FOR SAMA
****
Directors: Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts
Principal cast:
Waad Al-Kateab
Hamza Al-Kateab
Sama Al-Kateab
Country: UK/Syria
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 96 mins.
Australian release date: 6 February 2020.
Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts’ much-lauded documentary, For Sama, manages to be both profoundly disturbing and tremendously uplifting at the same time. Filmed over a five-year period in Syria, during the uprising in Aleppo, Waad’s camera takes us on an extraordinarily personal journey through her war-torn city, where many people decided to stay to protect the life of their ancient town by providing services for the sick and wounded. Over the long course of filming her people’s life-and-death stories, the brave filmmaker became romantically involved with one of her subjects, a doctor, Hamza Al-Kateab, and she married him and gave birth to a daughter, Sama, while making the film. As the title states, this powerful documentary is dedicated to her because, as Waad tells the baby girl on camera, “Sama, I need you to understand what we’re fighting for.”
Waad was an 18-year-old student at the University of Aleppo when protests against the regime of Bashar Al-Assad began in 2012 and she joined in from the outset. She explains, “I started capturing my personal story without any plan, just filming the protests in Syria on my mobile phone, like so many other activists. I could never have imagined where my journey would take me through those years.” As the repression of the regime intensified, she taught herself camera technique, becoming a proficient ‘citizen journalist’ and making many reports for Britain’s Channel 4 News under the banner title Inside Aleppo. During this time, she “found [her]self drawn to capture stories of life and humanity, rather than focus on the death and destruction which filled the news.” Which is not to say she didn’t record the atrocities too - it was simply unavoidable, especially as she was filming inside hospitals and they were a particular target for the Al-Assad forces. Her relationship with one of the medicos became more intimate over the months and, in the midst of the carnage, Hamza proposed to her and the couple set up house, almost as though nothing abnormal was going on. Before long, Waad was pregnant with Sama. “The mix of emotions we experienced - happiness, loss, love - and the horrific crimes committed by the Assad regime against ordinary innocent people, was unimaginable... even as we lived through it,” she says.
Screened in Sydney at the Antenna Documentary Film Festival and at the Melbourne International Film Festival last year, For Sama has deservedly won accolades at festivals around the world and it’s now getting a limited theatrical release in Australia. Among many other awards, it won Best Doco at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and at the recent BAFTA Awards and has been nominated as Best Documentary Feature in the forthcoming Oscars, so lovers of powerful factual stories won’t want to miss this incredible experience of the siege of Aleppo as seen through the eyes of a female reporter personally caught up in the horrific events. Waad and her co-director, Emmy Award-winner Edward Watts (who says, “This is the most important film I have ever worked on”), have made a remarkable, moving film that puts the viewer in the belly of the beast that was Aleppo at the height of the civil war, during the most devastating bombing and fiercest fighting. It’s an amazing feat.
Bertolt Brecht once wrote a poem that went, “In the dark times, Will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing, About the dark times.” This very personal film bears out those words by showing how human resilience and resistance can see people through the darkest of times. For Sama is a paean to the strength and spirit of the Syrian people, and especially the residents of Aleppo, who kept their humanity in the midst of the most terrible times.
Principal cast:
Waad Al-Kateab
Hamza Al-Kateab
Sama Al-Kateab
Country: UK/Syria
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 96 mins.
Australian release date: 6 February 2020.
Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts’ much-lauded documentary, For Sama, manages to be both profoundly disturbing and tremendously uplifting at the same time. Filmed over a five-year period in Syria, during the uprising in Aleppo, Waad’s camera takes us on an extraordinarily personal journey through her war-torn city, where many people decided to stay to protect the life of their ancient town by providing services for the sick and wounded. Over the long course of filming her people’s life-and-death stories, the brave filmmaker became romantically involved with one of her subjects, a doctor, Hamza Al-Kateab, and she married him and gave birth to a daughter, Sama, while making the film. As the title states, this powerful documentary is dedicated to her because, as Waad tells the baby girl on camera, “Sama, I need you to understand what we’re fighting for.”
Waad was an 18-year-old student at the University of Aleppo when protests against the regime of Bashar Al-Assad began in 2012 and she joined in from the outset. She explains, “I started capturing my personal story without any plan, just filming the protests in Syria on my mobile phone, like so many other activists. I could never have imagined where my journey would take me through those years.” As the repression of the regime intensified, she taught herself camera technique, becoming a proficient ‘citizen journalist’ and making many reports for Britain’s Channel 4 News under the banner title Inside Aleppo. During this time, she “found [her]self drawn to capture stories of life and humanity, rather than focus on the death and destruction which filled the news.” Which is not to say she didn’t record the atrocities too - it was simply unavoidable, especially as she was filming inside hospitals and they were a particular target for the Al-Assad forces. Her relationship with one of the medicos became more intimate over the months and, in the midst of the carnage, Hamza proposed to her and the couple set up house, almost as though nothing abnormal was going on. Before long, Waad was pregnant with Sama. “The mix of emotions we experienced - happiness, loss, love - and the horrific crimes committed by the Assad regime against ordinary innocent people, was unimaginable... even as we lived through it,” she says.
Screened in Sydney at the Antenna Documentary Film Festival and at the Melbourne International Film Festival last year, For Sama has deservedly won accolades at festivals around the world and it’s now getting a limited theatrical release in Australia. Among many other awards, it won Best Doco at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and at the recent BAFTA Awards and has been nominated as Best Documentary Feature in the forthcoming Oscars, so lovers of powerful factual stories won’t want to miss this incredible experience of the siege of Aleppo as seen through the eyes of a female reporter personally caught up in the horrific events. Waad and her co-director, Emmy Award-winner Edward Watts (who says, “This is the most important film I have ever worked on”), have made a remarkable, moving film that puts the viewer in the belly of the beast that was Aleppo at the height of the civil war, during the most devastating bombing and fiercest fighting. It’s an amazing feat.
Bertolt Brecht once wrote a poem that went, “In the dark times, Will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing, About the dark times.” This very personal film bears out those words by showing how human resilience and resistance can see people through the darkest of times. For Sama is a paean to the strength and spirit of the Syrian people, and especially the residents of Aleppo, who kept their humanity in the midst of the most terrible times.
