Picture of the movie For Sama © Waad al-Kateab
For Sama, a secret diary in the midst of the Syrian crisis
In For Sama, director Waad al-Kateab crafts an intimate portrait of war and motherhood seen through the eyes of a young Syrian woman fighting for freedom and survival as bombs fall over Aleppo. Co-directed with Edward Watts, the documentary is being shown as part of the Special Screenings and is up for the Caméra d’or.
In the dying days of Syria's Battle of Aleppo, Waad al-Kateab feared she wouldn't survive the bombings that were ravaging the city, and decided to record a message for her daughter. For Sama is a pure love letter that retraces the director's life over the five-year uprising in Aleppo. Five years in which the young woman fell in love, got married, and gave birth to Sama, while an increasingly violent war raged on in the background.
Shot by shot, Waad al-Kateab leads us towards Aleppo's tragic destiny, from its students' heady optimism in the 2012 revolution, to the government's ferocious attacks in 2016. Positioning herself as a spokesperson for the thousands of Syrians who, like her, are fighting for survival in a war-torn city, the director reveals the unbearable choice she finds herself facing: to leave Aleppo to secure her daughter's future, or to stay behind and continue the fight for freedom she has sacrificed so much for.
I felt a huge amount of responsibility for my city, its inhabitants and our friends: telling their stories so they would never be forgotten.
Waad el-Kateab compiled moments of loss and survival as well as glimpses of hope, and chose to create an ode to the humanity that lives on within the Syrian people, rather than focussing on the "death and destruction that monopolise the media," she explains.
