Syrian woman's Aleppo documentary takes top British award, up for Oscar

“For Sama,” a documentary that depicts an Aleppan mother's struggle to raise her daughter amid the Syrian war, won the best documentary award at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). The modest-budget film is also one of the few from the Middle East to make the 2020 Academy Awards' short list for best documentary.

“I take this award for the great Syrian people who are still suffering; and to the great heroes — the doctors, nurses, humanitarian workers and volunteers,” said Channel 4 News journalist Waad al-Kateab, the film's co-director and main character, at the awards ceremony Feb. 2. Kateab attended the ceremony in London with her daughter, Sama, the documentary's namesake, and her husband, surgeon Hamza al-Kateab.

She also recalled a dark moment in the war-torn city of Aleppo four years ago. “In 2016, we were at the basement of a hospital" being shelled. "At one point, we discussed with Channel 4 News where we could bury the footage so if we did not survive, it would not be lost.”

The documentary, co-directed by Kateab and Edward Watts, is based on Kateab’s own story in Aleppo between 2011-2016. She falls in love with a surgeon, Dr. Hamza al-Kateab, marries him in a cramped hospital room and eventually gives birth to their daughter, Sama. Her personal story runs in parallel with what happens to the city in those five years — starting with demonstrations at the universities calling for the Syrian revolution, the siege of Aleppo, the misery as the rebels and the government forces clashed in the city and its surroundings and displacement by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which pushed the rebels north toward the Syrian-Turkish border by the end of 2016.