For Sama
Ajyal Competition - Ajyal Film Festival 2019
Waad al-Kateab, Edward Watts / Syria, United Kingdom / 2019 / 95 min / Unknown / DCP / In Arabic, English / English subtitles
Themes: Documentary
Rated: 
Mature subject matter. Not suitable for minors. Individuals under the age of 18 are not admitted into cinemas.
Description
A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria. We witness her fall in love, get married and give birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice—whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.
Profoundly heartbreaking and undeniably universal, this relentlessly honest documentary is a painful but essential record of life during the ongoing war in Syria. Filmed almost entirely through phone and hand-held digital camera, the film provides an up-close and harrowingly personal view, intensely capturing the impossible choices faced by ordinary people caught up in conflict. But Waad and Hamza’s story isn’t just one of anguish and grief; it’s also one of compassion and courage, that ends on a note of genuine hope in the wake of extraordinary suffering.
Director
Waad al-Kateab
Edward Watts
Credits
- Producer
- Waad al-Kateab
- Cinematographer
- Waad al-Kateab
- Editor
- Chloë Lambourne, Simon McMahon
- Music
- Nainita Desai