Mawara Tahir
Syrians have been living in a state of war since almost a decade. Precious lives have been lost, hospitals, schools, houses have been bombarded and destroyed. Amongall this chaos a person named Waad Al-Kateab experienced and survived the catastrophic circumstances.
Waad Al-Kateab is a Syrian journalist, filmmaker, and activist. She along with Edward Watts produced a documentary named “For Sama” that will remind people of the plight of Syrians affected by the country’s nearly nine-year-old civil war. It will depict the misery of the Syrian victims and the hell unleashed upon them. They have already witnessed dooms day before the dooms day.
The film/documentary focuses on the plight of the Syrians and journey of a woman’s experience raising her daughter Sama in Aleppo during the Syrian Civil War. The documentary is an autobiography of Waad al-Kateab, it delineates her life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria. She falls in love and gives birth to Sama whilst conflict begins to engulf the city. She and her husband, a doctor, face an agonising decision to flee to safety or stay behind to help the innocent victims of war.
“About three years ago I was in that place where I didn’t know if I would be alive or not and now I’m under all the light, just trying to tell the story,” al-Kateab said.
The film is al-Kateab’s love letter to her little girl Sama. Narrated by al-Kateab, it was created out of over 500 hours of film she recorded for more than five years, beginning at age 18, as a student in Aleppo witnessing the beginning of the apocalypse.
While the conflict started to rage around the country Kateab decided to start filming on a mobile phone and she gradually moved onto more professional equipment, while occasionally reporting for British television from Aleppo.
Al-Kateab, at that point was expecting her second child, Taima, and her family was forced to drive away from Syria to Turkey and later London, where she united with Watts to transform the many long hours of the video into a film.
“I hope this is a big opportunity to shine a brighter light on the things that sadly continue to happen in Idlib and I also hope that the people of Syria will receive some hope from the success of ‘For Sama’,” said Kataeb.
“It was a big responsibility to tell the world that this is still happening and we can’t let that happen again and again and again. Unfortunately, as we’re speaking now, this is still happening,”
“For Sama” was nominated in the best documentary field after getting four British BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) nods and was granted “L’oeil d’or”, the best documentary, movie award in Cannes Film Festival in 2019. It also won multiple awards at the British Independent Film Awards in December 2019 including: best British independent film, best documentary, best director and best editing. The Academy Awards will be handed out on February 9 in Hollywood. If al-Kateab has her way, now four-year-old Sama will be there with her to share her story. We hope the best for the film to win at the Oscars to shine spotlight on Syria.
