User Reviews

In the opening minutes of this film we are seeing a woman's point of view in a building we soon realise is under attack. She gives her baby daughter to another woman who runs downstairs. As she is filming the corridor, up ahead there is an explosion and debris and smoke burst out from one of the doorways. The effect is clear - the audience immediately understands that this film is going to be a huge dose of frightening reality. A civil war seen from the inside.

Journalist Waad Al-Khateab lived in the heart of rebel territory during the siege of Aleppo with her doctor husband Hamza. Whilst he and his colleagues treated hundreds of injured civilians in a makeshift hospital she worked hard to document everything that they and their friends experienced whilst also bringing up her baby daughter, Sama, to whom the film is lovingly addressed.

The result is a searingly powerful collection of extraordinary footage, which captures both the horror and brutality of the violence visited on civilians as well as the humanity and genuine heroism of those who chose to stay and treat the wounded. The footage is unflinching and shocking in many places, and the audience is party to scenes of gut-wrenching grief. But we are also shown shining glimpses of humanity, of survival, camaraderie, love, and even humour at times.

But what makes For Sama really special is the intimate portrayal of a mother's love in the most terrifying of circumstances. Everything is filmed - we get to see Waad's immediate reaction as she holds the newborn Sama for the first time, and suddenly begins to weep for all those people they lost up until this point. It's a stunningly affecting thing to watch a documentary maker bare herself emotionally in this way.

And there are so many moments like that, of extraordinary emotional rawness, throughout this film that make it a must-see. It is a tough and harrowing watch but it is more than worth it for the unique and intimate perspective it provides.

While the documentary is great at showing the beginnings of the Syrian civil war, the disturbing and horrific consequences of the war, and the valiant efforts of her husband and the other hospital workers, one can't help but feel conflicted about the filmmaker's actions. At one point in the film, she and her husband visit a family member in Turkey (i.e., a safe country) and still decide to sneak back into Aleppo with their child, even though they know it's incredibly dangerous to try and get back in. It's difficult (for me, at least) to understand why she does not simply stay away from Aleppo, as it's obviously safer for her and her child.

As one of the people in the documentary says: "children have nothing to do with this war." Yet, Waad Al-Kaeb deliberately takes her baby back into Aleppo, knowing the dangers of the place. Despite being a great documentary, showing how people deal with the horrendous reality imposed on them, the film still left a bitter taste in my mouth, knowing that Sama did not have to go through all of this.

"For Sama" is a co-production between Syria, the United States and the United Kingdom from 2019, so this is still a relatively new movie. The title being in English (even if it is just one word) show that they certainly had major international ambitions for this film and they surely were fulfilled. But I will get to that later. As the film is, in its entirety, set in Syria, it is still a movie that is almost exclusively in the Arabic language. It runs for slightly over 1.5 hours, but still under 100 minutes, and one director here is prolific political documentary filmmaker Edward Watts, while the other is Waad Al-Kateab, the woman at the center of this story, a self-proclaimed journalist, for whom it is still the first filmmaking effort. I'll be curious to see if more will follow, maybe films in which she is just an observer and not a core character. But we shall talk about these (if they happen) talk on a later occasion. This one here is basically a fairly personal message from a mother to her first-born daughter. Or at least this is the idea the film uses really in order to create a personal atmosphere, especially at the very beginning and very end. Still, I am indeed curious what the girl will maybe thing 20 years from now or after her mother's death one day when she watches this film we have here. I myself would say that the whole idea does not feel too authentic for me. It would have felt more personal and authentic if she had kept it in her family album to really show her daughter one day and nobody else. But okay, maybe that is just me. In general, I struggled from the subjective perspective with several aspects here. For example, I am not big at all on the many jumps in time here, back and forth, but especially back, and I definitely would have preferred the entire story being told chronologically. But okay, maybe others liked it more this way and that is absolutely fine. Probably my subjective take took away another one or two stars compared to a 100% neutral take on this movie. But then again, a 100% neutral take does not exist anyway. Another thing I personally did not find too appealing were the truly personal moments, such as how we really see the female protagonist from extremely close immediately after giving birth when she holds her baby girls close to her. I am not sure if this is something you really need the entire world to see.

Now, these were just some perception. One of two things that extremely bothered me was that this film felt extremely scripted many times. One example would be how they depicted the matter of life and death situation in the car(s) at the end and it really felt like some cheap drama. This was absolutely not necessary. The fact that another young woman (or teenager) died earlier in a similar scenario gave enough grit and significance to that scene involving the main characters. There are several other examples. Basically, every time when the film tries to be really emotionally significant, it struggles hard with realism and authenticity. Like when Waad gets that flower before she has to leave the place. Or when the mother of the dead boy arrives rigfht on time for the camera to catch her. I am not saying that she was not the real mother or anything, but it felt extremely convenient and there were many moments like this. Another would be the scene with the highly pregnant woman being severely injured and we see the doctors fighting for the life of the kid there with how they move it, massage it etc. I must say this was a really dramatic moment because they could not really stage this situation, but, if you get what I mean, they staged it as much as they could with the happy ending with us not knowing anything about the woman or her health except the very basic statement that she will life etc. But maybe the worst quote for me was when we hear one of the many voice-overs from the narrator/protagonist and I am specifically talking about the one here where she says that she wished that her daughter never would have been born. And wishes that she had never met her husband and stayed with her family instead. I mean she obviously does not mean it that way and it is just meant in a way where she wants to emphasize how she really worries about their safety and does not want to deal with this fear, but still I found it an incredibly insensitive thing to say. Is this really what you want your daughter to hear? In general, the statements about feelings towards her child and man weren't a revelation here. Another example would be how she only wants her kid and man to be healthy and live. This is from earlier on, the exact opposite this time, to emphasize how she loves them more than her own life. A bit exaggerated too. Oh well. Maybe I am just too much of a rationalist for that.

And finally, another aspect (the second I found highly disappointing) I would like to elaborate on is the political component. Definitely the key aspect for this film to score an Academy Award nomination last year and looking at how the film won the BAFTA for Best Documentary, the Oscar was probably also not out of reach. This component is what I am referring to with the title of my review. It is extremely one-sided. If you knew nothing about the entire Aleppo situation, you could really think that Russia is personified evil and Assad is personified Satan. Some might agree. I do not. But I do not want to write an essay in their defense now. Let me just say so much: Even if you are directly involved like the main character here, a journalist's task (and Waad says that is her profession) is always to stay neutral. One thing I found especially off was how early on they said that Muslims and Christians unite to fight Assad. I am pretty sure that Christians will not fight Assad. Or at least not to the same extent that Muslims will. And to an even bigger extent that radical Muslims are. It is very debetable if you could call Waad herself a rebel and resistance fighter, but if she is not, then at least she has connections to radical resistance fighters, direct or indirect. The people you see in this film are by no means harmless sheep that are savaged by the big extremely violent wolf. They know very well themselves how to wreak havoc. And the film is not distancing itself from those who do. It simply completely excludes them, which I found quite a pity because otherwise, if it had spoken out against those, this movie really could have made a brave political statement. However, it did not and this is why the film is at its core not really worth seeing for me. But yeah, like I said, I am not surprised at all that liberal America (or I should say liberal Hollwood and Britain) really dug this movie and spammed it with awards. Over a 100 nominations is truly massive and so is the fact that it won over 50% of these. I personally believe that it did not deserve any of these. The reasons I have stated above mostly. Then again, I will not give up on Waad (yet) and even if she and especially her husband (also with the bizarre marriage proposal story that felt pretty made up to me) did not seem too likable, she is still a relatively young filmmaker and maybe she can step things up in the future with new upcoming projects. She is also pretty stunning by the way no denying. And I am glad that finally she understood when she was pregnant the second time that this place where she lives is definitely not a good place to bring up another child. So yeah, thumbs-down from me for this movie. I suggest you watch something else instead. Or if you decide to watch it, at lest take a neutral stance. You can still appreciate the giraffe comment about Assad. That one was pretty hilarious and one of the rare occasions when this film did not feel staged. But these moments are absolutely not sufficient in terms of quantity, i.e. frequent enough. So go watch something else instead.

For Sama is an account of a woman's experiences during the siege of the Syrian city of Aleppo. A brutal component of the battle by Syria's president Assad and his Russian ally is the deliberate targeting of civilians and in particular schools and hospitals. This documentary details the story of a young woman, a college student who became involved in the protests against the Assad regime's repression of the Syrian people. She goes to work in a hospital in Aleppo and falls in love with a doctor. They marry and their daughter is born and named Sama. The mothers accumulates films she has documented before and after her daughters birth as a future testament to her. The couple and their child essentially live in the hospital with their friends and staff. The husband and the hospital staff treat casualties that would overwhelm the most modern Western facilities. It breaks your heart to see the deaths of so many innocent people and in particular the children who are mourned by the family members who accompanied them. The incessant bombing by the Syrian government and the Russians is a thing that they live with every day and has to be viewed as nothing less than war crimes. In the face of all this, they all try to maintain each other's spirits and bring together what small shreads of decency that still exists to replace the horror with a sense of the world that existed before the war. This to me was so touching and I was so proud to realize what these people were capable of. It reaffirmed the proof that humanity and dignity cannot be eradicated by despots and killers. Do not miss this, rarely is the triumph of the human condition displayed so passionately in the midst of unrelenting terror.