Review: For Sama is 2019’s Most Indispensable Documentary Film

Some films you know little of the plot or much about them at all going into them. That’s not necessarily the message I want to promote today. No, rather heading into a provoking, poignant real life scenario where we seem to have our heads turned the other way. We don’t quite know what is going on outside the comfort of our own walls. Walls that are not now reduced to dusty, crumbling ruins.

What was once a relatively peaceful protest against President Bashar al-Assad, soon became a near-five year period that will stick out like a forever scarred, excruciatingly sore thumb for the history of Aleppo, Syria. The military confrontation in Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city, in 2012 and beyond, against the government left over thirty thousand of their people dead by 2016. Astonishing, right? How about that five and a half thousand were children. Wait, a shocking three quarters of those lives taken were civilians (just one quarter military deaths). Now that’s a massacre.

The 2019 documentary, For Sama, confronts this atrocious portion of our history head-on. Yes, I say ‘our’. I have never stepped foot in Aleppo, but they are our people. This is our world. We are supposed to be on the same side. In Aleppo, human beings live and breathe just like us. Eat food, have families, laugh at witty remarks. Syrians are not aliens, to us or themselves. But the truth is, our world is a truly fucked up mess.

For Sama is directed by Edward Watts and Waad Al-Khateab. The latter also produced and it is from her point of view we experience this tiny portion of an almighty big world problem. Waad Al-Khateab, a journalist, attempts to account much of the horror that befalls this city as she falls in love and marries Hamza Al-Khateab, and gives birth to Sama Al-Khateab. Unflinchingly in For Sama – as it is is real life – the message that it is incomprohensible that children have any part in this awfulness is blatantly realised.

Waad’s voice-over (used sparingly when the visuals speak for themselves) tells whomever her document is for, that you don’t understand certain struggles and meaning in life until you have a baby. That is quite true for any parent, but rings a hell of a lot more true in these circumstances. In those opening moments, marooned once again by a Russian airstrike, in the makeshift hospital her husband would form, the Boom! and then the smoke emerging in the corridor is abundantly frightening to say the least.

Not knowing if your baby is safe is the stuff of nightmares – even for us with electricity and an abundance of food. We hear doctors having to pump ventilators by hand, with people rushing back and forth in a hectic, unfathomable rush for safety. What a joy it is, though, to see little Sama feeding on her bottle, perhaps innocent to the hell surrounding her. “What a life I have brought you into,” Waad solemnly airs “Will you ever forgive me?”

Of course, the siege is no place to raise a child, but Sama is one such baby who enters our world in the thick of it. And praise be they will grow up showing no animosity towards their parents. Only love and gratitude for taking them this far. Waad is conflicted, too, at the film’s closing moments. Will Sama resent or love her mother for taking her from Aleppo once she is old enough to understand?

The prominent trauma in For Sama, is the unblemished conditions we see for the children. Never mind that little kids know what a cluster bomb is and the damage it can do. They tell stories of how their huge family were there one minute, and all of a sudden they are gone forever. The images of the blood-riddled children is horrifying in all ways imaginable. In one scene, an intensely distraught boy desperately wants to see if his brother is okay, but yet can’t bare to see the state he is in.

And that’s kind of how we view this documentary – to a much more luxurious degree in our cushioned seats – in seeing these sorrowful moments with our eyes, while we just want to look away. “He is my son!” the freshly grieving mother declares, scooping up his limp body, “I will carry him. Why wouldn’t I?” Are you going to argue with her?

And never has an emergency cesarean been so harrowing to watch. Or even comprehend. That image of the colourless newborn baby, like a rag doll, is heartbreaking. There appears little hope of revival, the tiny body is patted and shaken like fresh bread dough. You wonder in shame how much more of this you have to witness. My own heart melted together and started beating again when the baby’s eyes actually open, and they started to cry. As close to a miracle of new life on film you’re likely to see. I almost choked on my own gasp.

What Waad Al-Khateab documents is remarkable throughout. How many times do we watch documentaries as powerful as this and shake our heads? Constantly reawakened to the brutality of the living world. Syria is just one country smeared with injustice and oppression, and For Sama is one such documentary that hits every nerve. Filling you with dread and that feeling of mortification. Somehow grateful to be on this green Earth, yet not allowed to feel the jubilation of life.

The whole thing becomes an increasingly stressful affair. When one huge Bang! goes off outside, Waad is genuinely startled, instinctively picking up Sama and holding her close. It might be the last time she does. Otherwise, the often distant or eerily close explosions appear as natural as birds singing to these folk. There is even a segment of what might be CCTV footage as bombs invade people simply walking along or immersed in chit-chat.

For all its sadness, For Sama remains a wondrous human story. With the constant fear comes the natural flair between decent people. There’s plenty of work for a doctor, like Waad’s hard-working – seemingly unbreakable – husband Hamza. What with all the injuries from protests – in the region of three hundred patients a day, in one of the only running hospitals in Aleppo. That’s right, the rest were destroyed because looming targets were schools and hospitals. But those moments when they set up their own hospital, without aid from the powers that be, is the kind of pride and joy stuff we will never fully absorb.

One mother sees the funny side of her daughter getting into her bed and peeing on her. Set up as she anecdotally describes how before she realised it was her little girl, it might well have been her husband treating her to coffee in bed.

And the Aleppo that Waad sees, and invites us into, is one where people can still afford a smile. A smile that ought to be branded an essential commodity for putting people at ease, even if for just a few seconds. There’s even a scene where a husband hands his wife a persimmons fruit, and her euphoria leaves you speechless.

It’s no spoiler that in the end a ceasefire was announced, but the people of Aleppo are forced to evacuate. Leave so much of what they owned, of who there are, behind them. That which was not destroyed already of course. For Sama is a clear, essential portrayal of why the term ‘Peace on Earth’ never loses its potency. The immeasurable violence and loss that the Syrian people had to endure can’t be simply comprehended by you or I as we complain about the weather and taxes.

For Sama is a marvel of a documentary film. A gust of cinematic air that leaves a lasting impact. One which will indeed turn the strongest of stomachs and burst the coldest of hearts. Reminding us once again how fragile we are – mentally and physically – as human beings. We are to be treasured.