For Sama | Hao Min Culture Action
Films screened
For Sama
For Sama, co-directed by Syrian filmmaker Waad al-Kateab and British director Edward Watts, won the Golden Eye at Cannes. Shot inside a Syrian war zone, it records the daily lives of ordinary people under siege.
The film is framed as a letter from Waad to her daughter Sama, born during the war, recounting five years of her youth in Aleppo.
Waad lived with her doctor husband Hamza and their daughter in a hospital in the rebel-held part of the city. Facing bombardment every day and expecting that she might not survive, she filmed so that Sama would one day know who her parents were, what they hoped for, and how she came into the world.
The hospital was bombed. People were attacked with gas. Government forces killed women and children. Newly parents, Waad and Hamza were forced to flee, saying goodbye in tears to the city that had held their youth and their dreams. What the violence could not destroy was their daughter — and what she stands for.
For Sama is not only a documentary but a mother's declaration of love to her child, and a portrait of tenderness and endurance in wartime.