For Sama

It was interesting watching For Sama at this current time, during a pandemic that has us sacrificing by not going to movies or bars or parties. Compared to what people go through in Syria, it's a day at the park.

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary (and a winner of the BAFTA for the same category) For Sama is not easy to watch. Their are gruesome images, and dead children. But it's an unblinking look at the civil war in Syria from the front line.

The film was directed by Waad al-Kateab (a pseudonym) and Edward Watts, but was shot by al-Kateab over a period of several years, beginning with a peaceful protest against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, to the devastating effects of Russian war planes on Aleppo. Al-Kateab was a student at the university, and began to film everything. We see the beginning of her romance with her husband Hamza, who is a doctor, and then the birth of their first child, Sama, to whom al-Kataeb narrates the film as a love letter.

Watching films like this, in which war is waged on civilians, is brutally depressing. When you watch a hospital being bombed, you wonder what is wrong with humanity. But these people did their best to carry on, and there are moments when you see humanity at its best. Hamza and Waad actually move into the hospital, where the wounded are brought. We see the heartbreak of two young boys bringing in their brother, who is dead. But we also see a woman, nine months pregnant, wounded and undergoing an emergency Cesarean. The baby has no pulse at first, but the doctors work on him, rubbing his flesh, paddling his little bottom, and when his eyes open you feel a rush of exhilaration.

Al-Kateab frequently apologizes to her daughter, at times regretting that she was brought into such a nightmarish world. The parents at one point go into Turkey, and then come back, with the baby, and you question their sanity. But the city has a powerful hold on them, and they only leave when there is absolutely no choice.

What has gone on in Syria the last five years or so is madness on an epic scale. And fuck the Russians for what they have done, and Assad, for gassing his own people. One wonders why hospitals would be bombed, or children killed, and you realize that this is how they win, by beating down the spirit of the rebellion.