For Sama – Film Review and Q & A at the GFT

FOR SAMA is simply a film that everyone must see. You will weep over the bloody betrayal of the Syrian people’s hopes for freedom. It might sound like some cheap Spartacus shot to repeat what  Edward Watts Channel 4 co-director said at the Q&A after tonight’s showing at Glasgow Film Theatre –‘We are all Syrians’, but who can ponder what has happened in that country, the outrageously murderous behaviour of the Russian regime, the depressing cowardice of the west, the inaction of the UN, the shitty nastiness of the Turkish regime, and so on, and not know that we are all complicit in the massacre that took place in Aleppo? 

Syrian journalist Waad Alkateab spent five years of incredible fortitude and courage, filming on a hand held camera as her own life through marriage and childbirth was thrown into fragility and anguish while the Syrian spring moved from joyous rebellion and freedom to daily siege , bombing, death and overwhelming destruction. 

This no-holds barred gritty documentation from a woman whose husband ran the last surviving cottage hospital in the city sees almost unbearable scenes of suffering, of death, of the blood and guts that are the reality of this war. But still with the birth of her child, with the support and daily laughter of her colleagues and friends, and the love of her partner, we feel the strength of their humane and committed struggle for freedom from the Assad thugs corrupting their country. -Yet this is the world, the Trump, Salvini, Brexit and Modi world we are actually voting for … 

But what can we do? is a standard response , says al-Kateab, of the Q&A audiences at showings, who feel like helpless bystanders. It is enough even to go out and talk about this film says Watts, to bear witness. Can that help build pressure to stop the massacre taking place now in Idlib?