من أجل سما / Kirje Alepposta
2019
Biopic / Suspense / Society
Theme: Fearless Minds
Country: United Kingdom, USA
Director: Waad al-Kateab / Waad al-Khateab / Waad Alkateab, Edward Watts
Production: Waad al-Kateab / Channel 4 News, ITN Productions
Duration: 100 min
Rating: 16
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English
Distribution: Autlook Filmsales
Print source: Autlook Filmsales
Cinematography: Waad al-Kateab
Editing: Chloe Lambourne, Simon McMahon
Music: Nainita Desai
Collaboration: U.S. Embassy in Finland, British Embassy Helsinki.
Telepremiere in Finland: 13 April 2020 Yle Teema Fem.
Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF) Love & Anarchy.
Viewed at Bio Rex, Helsinki, 27 Sep 2019.
Among the many activists who have documented the civil war in Syria, the story of 26-year-old Waad al-Kateab is perhaps one of the most remarkable.
Jordan Mintzer quoted by HIFF: "A mere student when the conflict began to sweep through Aleppo in 2012, al-Kateab would, four years later, become one of the last survivors to leave the city. By that time, she was married to a heroic doctor and was the mother of a young girl, with another child on the way. And she was already renowned, especially in the U.K., for her harrowing video reportages – originally published on her Inside Aleppo website – of a city besieged by constant bombings and artillery fire, with the victims counting in the tens of thousands."
"In For Sama, al-Kateab and co-director Edward Watts have fashioned a feature-length letter to the activist’s first daughter. … The film offers up a rare firsthand account of war from a strictly female perspective, focusing on how conflict affects families, and, especially, the hundreds of innocent victims that are children."
"(A)fter watching the arresting images that al-Kateab captures, and the courageous actions of Hamza and his team, it becomes clear that what they did, they also did for Sama — a little girl born into war whose miraculous survival is yet another act of resistance." Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter quoted by HIFF
AA: The audience was in tears watching For Sama, the first person documentary about the massacre in Aleppo inflicted by President Bashar al-Assad on his own people with the brutal help of Vladimir Putin's air force.
For Sama is a video diary kept by the director, journalist Waad al-Khateab, for five years in Aleppo, a city that was ancient already when its name first appeared in the classic texts of antiquity. It was made for her daughter Sama.
It's a war film like no other. The structure is not linear. We start with an address to Sama, al-Khateab's daughter. In flashbacks we return to the ancien régime: al-Assad's country drowning in injustice and corruption. Revolution begins, and the battle of Aleppo starts in 2012. The people who remain in the revolutionary part of the city have decided to live in dignity or die.
Al-Khateab keeps reporting and documenting everything with her handheld camera. Airstrikes, bombshells, bodybags, mass graves. The regime tortures handcuffed civilians and executes them. Soon there are no schools or medical services left. Everything must be rebuilt.
Doctor Hamza is abandoned by his former wife, faced by her ultimatum: "revolution or marriage". He stays in Aleppo and gets married with Waad al-Khateab who soon expects their baby, Sama.
One of the most important features in For Sama is that it is a record of the fighting spirit of the free citizens of Aleppo. They are in great spirits, full of joy and optimism, playing with their children, cultivating their gardens, learning ancient songs. "Songs louder than bombs". There is a wonderful wedding party of Doctor Hamza and Waad al-Khateab. "An attempt at normal life is an act against the regime".
The childbirth sequence is thrilling, moving and shocking. "The new life is fragile, as fragile as the freedom of Aleppo". Sama becomes the daughter of the whole hospital. The most terrifying sequence is of a dangerously wounded mother who is nine months pregnant. We fear the worst, but both mother and baby are saved and resuscitated in an agonizing sequence.
Al-Khateab's footage is usually handheld. There are also surveillance camera views. And awesome drone shots over ruined Aleppo. Panoramic shots also give us an epic view: there are 180° pans and even a 360° pan. Because of these startling shots I'm reminded of Miasto nieujarzmione (1949), the first film adaptation of the testimony of "The Robinson of Warsaw", Wladyslaw Szpilman. Roman Polanski's The Pianist is more famous, but the unforgettable distinction of the original film is its harrowing authentic location footage of the ruins of Warsaw.
The people fight until the end, even burning tyres for zero visibility for Putin's bombers. Until the resistance is crushed. Our family starts for the exile on a perilous journey through the regime's control posts. Even a new baby is on its way. They will never recover from the trauma. To quote the commentary: "it's a long road full of danger and fear, but freedom awaits us in the end".
JANNE SUNDQVIST (HIFF):
Waad al-Kateab on nuori toimittaja ja pienen lapsen äiti, joka jää Syyriaan tubettaakseen sodan tapahtumat kaiken maailman nähtäväksi. Äärimmäisen voimakas ja palkintoja rohmunnut For Sama on Itä-Aleppon viimeisestä sairaalasta maailmalle raportoineen al-Kateabin yritys selittää Sama-tyttärelleen, miksi hän päätti jäädä.
Koskettava dokumentti seuraa raunio-vloggarin elämää viisi vuotta opiskelijoiden järjestämistä mielenosoituksista aina hänen viimeisiin päiviinsä Aleppossa. Videopäiväkirjan lämpimämmissä otteissa al-Kateab rakastuu, menee naimisiin ja saa lapsen. Yleisempiä ovat päivät, joina venäläiset sotakoneet runtelevat kaupunkia ja lapset kantavat pommien alle jääneitä sisariaan sairaalaan.
Länsimaissa jo ignooratun 2000-luvun julmimman sodan hinnan voi tajuta todistamalla ihmisten arkea sen keskellä. Dokumenttia hallitsee alituinen pelko siinä nähtävien henkilöiden tulevaisuudesta. Nuorelle perheelle tekee mieli huutaa, että lähtekää jo tai te kuolette!
Rintaa puristavasta tunnelmasta huolimatta For Sama on käsittämättömän toiveikas. Pommien kylväessä kuolemaa Aleppon kaduille, nuorten syyrialaisten sodan uhreille antama apu tuo toivoa lähes läpäisemättömään pimeyteen.
Janne Sundqvist (HIFF)
EFA European Film Awards 7.1.2019
Synopsis
FOR SAMA is both an intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war.
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, as she falls in love, gets married and gives 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.
Directors Statement
WAAD AL-KATEAB
This is not just a film for me – it’s my life. 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. 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.
From the beginning, I found myself drawn to capture stories of life and humanity, rather than focus on the death and destruction which filled the news. And as a woman in a conservative part of Aleppo, I was able to access the experiences of women and children in the city, traditionally off limits to men. That allowed me to show the unseen reality of life for ordinary Syrians, trying to live normal lives amid our struggle for freedom.
At the same time, I continued living my own life. I married and had a child. I found myself trying to balance so many different roles: Waad the mother, Waad the activist, Waad the citizen journalist and Waad the director. All those people both embodied and led the story. Now I feel those different aspects of my life are what gives the film its strength.
I want people to understand that, while this is my story and shows what happened to me and my family, our experience is not unusual. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians experienced the same thing and are still doing so today. The dictator who committed these crimes is still in power, still killing innocent people. Our struggle for justice is as relevant today as it was when the revolution first began.
I felt a great burden of responsibility to the city, its people and to our friends – to tell their stories properly so they will never be forgotten and no one can ever distort the truth of what we lived through.
Making the film was almost as hard as living through the years in Aleppo. I had to re-live everything again and again. Thankfully I worked with a great team who cared so much about me, my story, and Syria.
One person in particular is my fellow director, Edward Watts. He took the burden I carried onto his own shoulders and, with his strength added to my own, we were able to turn the vast complexity of my life and footage into the crafted story you see today.
EDWARD WATTS
This is the most important film I have ever worked on. I have been following the Syrian uprising since it began, trying to tell the truth beyond the lies and propaganda that have muddied people’s understanding of what happened in that country. That truth is embodied in the courage, honesty and altruism of Waad, Hamza and Sama. They are extraordinary people; an example to us all in these days of great tumult in the world.
In my documentaries I have always sought to highlight the humour and humanity we share with people living in desperate situations in the far flung corners of the world. That is the truth that will save us, not the false divisions so many people peddle these days. Our failure to stand with ordinary Syrians when they were protesting for their freedom and were brutally crushed by the Assad regime has led directly to so many of the problems that affect us all today, from the birth of ISIS to the rise of the far right, the refugee crisis and the normalisation of indiscriminate assaults against civilian populations in war.
Through Waad’s story, the world can finally see what really happened, understand the depth of our tragic mistakes and hopefully re-discover the steel in our bones to ensure it never happens again. It has been an honour and a privilege to direct this film with her.
Director's Biography
WAAD AL-KATEAB
In January 2016, Waad al-Kateab started documenting the horrors of Aleppo for Channel 4 News in a series of devastating films simply titled Inside Aleppo.
The reports she made for Channel 4 News on the conflict in Syria, and the most complex humanitarian crisis in the world, became the most watched pieces on the UK news programme – and received almost half a billion views online and won 24 awards – including the 2016 International Emmy for breaking news coverage.
Waad was a marketing student at the University of Aleppo when protests against the Assad regime swept the country in 2011. Like many hundreds of her fellow Syrians, she became a citizen journalist determined to document the horrors of the war.
She taught herself how to film – and started filming the human suffering around her as Assad forces battled rebels for control of Aleppo. She stayed through the devastating siege – documenting the terrible loss of life and producing some of the most memorable images of the six-year conflict. When she and her family were evacuated from Aleppo in December 2016, she managed to get all her footage out.
Waad lives in London with her husband Hamza and two daughters.
EDWARD WATTS
Edward Watts is an Emmy award-winning, BAFTA nominated filmmaker who has directed over twenty narrative and documentary films that tell true stories of courage, heroism and humour from across the world, covering everything from war crimes in the Congo to the colourful lives of residents in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
His 2015 film ESCAPE FROM ISIS exposed the brutal treatment of the estimated four million women living under the rule of the "Islamic State" and, for the first time on television, told the extraordinary story of an underground network trying to save those it can. It received numerous international awards and citations, including an International Emmy and BAFTA nomination for Best Current Affairs Documentary.
Among his other work, his first narrative short film OKSIJAN told the incredible true story of a 7-year-old Afghan boy’s fight to survive as he is smuggled to the UK in a refrigerated lorry and the air inside begins to run out. Edward’s filmmaking aspires to tell visceral, gripping stories about people who live in far flung corners of the world, to emphasise our common humanity to audiences back home. In so doing, he hopes his films can make a positive contribution to reducing the hatred in our tumultuous world. He has an eye for the unexpected: the intimacy found even in the bleakest places; the stories of hope amid horror. He creates films on a strong foundation of riveting narrative story-telling and striking, cinematic images.
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