For Sama is Devestatingly Beautiful
Waad Al-Kateab’s For Sama is one of the most powerful documentaries of the year, if not the best documentary of the year. In a devestatingly beautiful portrait, it follows Waad Al-Kateab’s life, in the midst of the Battle of Aleppo, as she gives birth to her daughter, Sama. The film is, essentially, a love letter to Sama to understand what happened in Aleppo — something she clearly didn’t when she was growing up as a baby.
One thing I have to stress out that this movie is incredibly hard to watch. Running at only 84 minutes, Kateab’s film has enough material to make you feel incredibly depressed and bring you down to unbearable emotion. Long, close-up shots of dead children are shown. In one of the most heartbreaking sequences of the year, Sama’s childhood innocence is juxtaposed in front of a dead child. We see her smiling joyfully, as her baby spirit shields her from the reality of Aleppo — while a dead child is lying in front of her. The film doesn’t hold anything back, and much like Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog, shows you literally EVERYTHING so that you, the audience member, understands exactly what happened in Aleppo. At the end of the film, it’s very much clear what happened and you will never be the same.
One of the most disturbing sequences involves a baby being forcefully brought into the world by C-Section. When it is born, the baby has no pulse, and looks to be deceased. Long close-ups of the dead baby is shown and I couldn’t bear witnessing this atrocity. Until, miraculously, the baby starts crying after his heart starts to beat when a nurse pats him on the back to try and revive him. I’ve never felt this watercolor of emotions this year until I saw For Sama and this utterly devestating sequence. It’s a sequence that sticks with you as you learn exactly what nurses, mothers, children live through continuously and daily. It’s too horrible for a human being to live through such atrocities, let alone children. When the brother of a dead child starts crying during another sequence, the hell that they live through is constant and you can’t help but admire the courage and passion Al-Kateab brings to her movie, by showing us touching testimonials of family members who live through hell and making sure we understand exactly what that hell feels like, by putting the viewer in front of the action aesthetically (the film is mostly composed of a mobile camera at the center of everything and POV shots) and psychologically. You will never be the same, psychologically, after watching (and experiencing) the raw power of For Sama.
However, admist all of the chaos, admist all of the raw human emotion that is being put on screen by Waad Al-Kateab is the personal letter to Sama that makes the entire film. Her narration is beautifully written and punctuated, which makes the movie stand out even more, emotionally. I didn’t know what to expect when I pressed play, but I lived through a total river of emotional power that’s both incredibly devastating and emotionally impactful (it’s VERY hard to watch at times), but beneath the devestation, beneath the death, beneeath the violence, beneath the conflict, was the power of cinema, the power of documentary cinema that adresses Waad’s daughter to make sure she understands and she remembers what happened when she was at her most vulnerable, at her most innocent. It’s a movie to watch, and it’s available for free on YouTube. If you have 84 minutes to spare, I cannot recommend this movie enough.
✯✯✯✯✯
