Movie Review: For Sama

For Sama **** / *****

Directed by: Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts.

 

There have been many documentaries about Syria in the last few years – from ones that try to give an overall overview of the conflict – the history of it, etc. to those that concentrate on just one small part of it. Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts’ For Sama is perhaps the most extraordinary of them all – a personal film that documents the day-to-day life on the ground in the last days of Aleppo, all from the camera Waad’s own camera as she documents herself, her fellow revolutionaries, including her doctor husband, and her fellow citizens, who live horribly traumatic day-to-day lives, where the threat of death is always there, and yet they push on still. The film gets its title for Waad’s daughter – she is making this film for her in order to explain to her one day why she and her husband, Hamza, felt they had to stay – even after Sama was born. In a way, she may be trying to explain it to herself – she doesn’t always seem so sure, and by the end, she has left as well. The result is this intimate documentary.

 

All the footage we see in For Sama was shot by Waad herself – the voiceover we hear is hers as well. She captures heartbreaking footage – footage of mother’s moments after the death of their children, brothers carrying the lifeless body of another brother, stillborn babies be brought back, etc. This film can be as dramatic as any other you will see this year – as emotionally traumatizing as well.

 

She also captures the grim everyday – the streets that are basically now just rubble. The nightly routine of the hospital staff gathering in the “safest room in the building” as another airstrike is going on. Mothers who continue to live there, and continue to try and make the lives of their children if not happy, at least somewhat normal.

 

In voiceover, we hear her try and justify staying. All this started out with so much promise – the Arab Spring seemed to give people like her hope that things could change, even in Syria. When the Assad regime started murdering its own civilians, they thought that sooner or later someone would do something about it – the world doesn’t let this kind of thing happen anymore, do they?

 

Apparently, we do – and For Sama is a document of just what the cost was. If you still don’t know the history here, Cries from Syria probably gives you a better overview than For Sama, which assumes some general knowledge. But this is a film that should be required viewing. We have done almost nothing for the Syrian people in the West – perhaps the very least we can do is watch a film like For Sama, if only to realize what it is we have turned away from.