For Sama (2019) is a crash course in modern history. A documentary filmed by Waad al-Kateab for her daughter, Sama, the film tells the story of a family living in the Syrian uprising from 2011 to 2019 as the revolution evolved into a civil war and humanitarian crisis. If you’ve seen the news in the past 5-10 years and felt disconnected or detached from what’s going on in the world, this is a movie that will bring you jarringly up to speed. You can skip three episodes of The Daily and watch For Sama, and you will be all the more world-wise for it.
The film starts in a hospital as Sama has just been born. A tranquil and beautiful moment is cut short as doctors and nurses yell, “Another one is coming,” and we hear the distant wail of planes, followed by the sudden sound of blasts as bombs detonate outside. The patients who are mobile run for safe zones inside the hospital. Waad, filming all the while, runs with the staff, helping her and her child as smoke pours into the hallways. Waad and Sama find safety as the staff runs to assist patients who need help moving and patients whose ventilators have lost power due to the bombing and now need manual respiration.
The film's effectiveness stems from its dual role as a historical time capsule and a heartfelt letter to someone born into a cruel world that is almost impossible to understand. Ironically, “almost impossible to understand” is how the privileged people born on safer shores experience foreign trauma as well. We don’t get it. In the first thirty minutes of the film, we’re exposed to horrible images of violence and desperation. This is a very difficult film to watch at times. Much of the film was made inside a hospital set up by Hamza, Waad’s husband, and many scenes show us children who are injured or killed during attacks on Aleppo. For a viewer like myself, it can be hard to process and understand how things can get so dire. All of the history I’ve read, the podcasts I’ve listened to, hell, all of the movies I’ve watched! Nothing prepared me for this one. In addressing her story directly to Sama, al-Kateab allows us to experience the education she wishes to provide for her daughter along with her. We get a level of context and insight that I’m not sure I’ve ever received from any media, be it news, documentaries, narrative films, podcasts, public radio, etc.
Watching sequences in the film of Syrians working to evacuate and clean up shelled-out areas of Aleppo, reflecting the film’s power to engage and provoke thought, I found myself with dozens of questions by the end. Where do these people go when their work is done? How do they eat? What are the supply chains for food and medicine like in Syria? How does anything remotely resembling a city function at all? Are the forces doing the fighting even remotely equal? It seems like Russian planes just drop bombs daily on an undefended city. I ask these questions out loud to illustrate one of the outstanding accomplishments of For Sama: the stoking of profound curiosity to understand better what’s going on in the world.
When I put For Sama on, I was at first surprised by the modern hospital, seemingly no different than any hospital you might visit in the “first world.” While watching, I froze at the images of children injured by bombings, and at last, after watching the entirety of this devastating film, I was shocked by the spirit and optimistic attitude of the people working in the hospital. Despite their unimaginable circumstances, they worked to pump ventilators by hand and make wisecracks about the bombs falling. The doctors kept their spirits high for themselves and their patients. Their attitude was a practiced demeanor of calm; these medical professionals who had been nursing students a year or two before, joking, smiling, but eyes always up and about. Always ready.
The ongoing bombing of Syria today underscores a global struggle for freedom and sovereignty, paralleled in places like Palestine and Ukraine. Nothing I’ve seen has ever pushed me as hard as For Sama to consider the toll war takes on individuals and the world.
For Sama
Directed by Waad al-Kateab
2019
100 minutes
Arabic
Recommended way to watch (at time of publication): Kanopy
You’ll like this if you like: Persepolis (2007), Star Wars (1977)