For Sama

There are some film­mak­ers who believe that the cam­era does not pos­sess the capac­i­ty to amply cap­ture the true hor­rors of war. The sights, sounds and smells exist beyond the com­pre­hen­sion of those who haven’t expe­ri­enced a mor­tar attack, or brushed up against a weep­ing moth­er as she cra­dles her dead child.

Sama is the baby daugh­ter of one-time ama­teur video jour­nal­ist Waad Al-Kateab, and she some­how sus­tains a large grin as the city of Alep­po crum­bles around her at the hands of Bashar al-Assad’s oppres­sive régime which is backed by the Russ­ian mil­i­tary. Waad explains to her daugh­ter that she must doc­u­ment the dev­as­ta­tion with her dig­i­tal cam­era for pos­ter­i­ty, but also so she might come a lit­tle clos­er to explain­ing what she lived through – if, indeed, she lives through it.

The episod­ic struc­ture mim­ics the ran­dom­ness of the city’s mil­i­tary bom­bard­ment, some­times an air strike, occa­sion­al­ly some troop fire, often wide­spread casu­al­ties and hor­ren­dous chaos. She locates occa­sion­al solace and rea­son in her inde­fati­ga­ble hus­band, Hamza, a doc­tor who some­how man­ages to main­tain laser focus on his duties despite the ever-expand­ing dev­as­ta­tion and the ever-dwin­dling inven­to­ry of med­ical supplies.

Sight unseen, the film might come across as a trite plea for glob­al peace in the name of ​“the chil­dren”, and it does fit that bill in many ways. Though trite it is not, as Al-Kateab (along with co-direc­tor Edward Watts) mute any unwar­rant­ed sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty by focus­ing pure­ly on what’s there and what’s hap­pen­ing, forc­ing the view­er to con­stant­ly ask of them­selves: are you com­fort­able with all of this?

As the film shifts into its heart­break­ing lat­ter stages, it begins to include moments which sug­gest that, even when soci­ety has hit its nadir, there are frag­ments of tran­scen­dent mag­ic to be found among the ruins. Essential.