For Sama

Winner of both the L’Œil d’Or award for Best Documentary at Cannes and the Grand Jury prize for Best Documentary at SXSW, For Sama is an intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war. Told as a cinematic love letter from young Syrian mother Waad al-Kateab to her daughter, the film traces Waad’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth, while catastrophic conflict rises around her. Waad’s camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as she wrestles with an impossible choice – whether to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom, for which she has already sacrificed so much.