person journey
For Sama: Filming the Siege of Aleppo from Inside
Waad al-Kateab began filming in Aleppo as a student in 2011. She was still filming five years later when the siege ended — with a baby daughter, footage of everything, and a world that had watched and done almost nothing.
Confirmed2 chapters2011-01-01— 2019-06-01
How a Syrian student became the world's witness to east Aleppo — filming her daughter's birth in a besieged hospital, and the deaths of the people she loved.
01
Chapter 01custom01 / 02
From Student to Witness: Aleppo 2011–2013
Waad al-Kateab was 20 years old and studying economics at Aleppo University when the revolution began in 2011. When the fighting reached Aleppo in 2012, she began filming — first with a phone camera, then with proper equipment — documenting what was happening around her.
She had no formal journalism training. She had a phone, then a camera, and eyes. What she filmed was the daily life of a city being unmade: people cooking in apartments next to shattered windows, children playing near rubble, neighbors arguing about whether to stay or go.
When the city divided in 2012 and east Aleppo fell under rebel control, al-Kateab stayed. She began contributing footage to Channel 4 News in the United Kingdom, which became her primary outlet. Her reports were among the most watched coverage of east Aleppo to reach Western audiences during the first years of the siege.
She met and married Hamza al-Kateab, a doctor who ran a makeshift hospital in the besieged eastern part of the city. Her filming became inseparable from the hospital's story: the doctors who stayed, the impossible choices about who could be saved, the regular bombardment that damaged and destroyed medical facilities.
She became pregnant. She continued filming. Her daughter Sama was born in the hospital in a city under siege, in 2016, during the final and most intense phase of the bombardment.
She had no formal journalism training. She had a phone, then a camera, and eyes. What she filmed was the daily life of a city being unmade: people cooking in apartments next to shattered windows, children playing near rubble, neighbors arguing about whether to stay or go.
When the city divided in 2012 and east Aleppo fell under rebel control, al-Kateab stayed. She began contributing footage to Channel 4 News in the United Kingdom, which became her primary outlet. Her reports were among the most watched coverage of east Aleppo to reach Western audiences during the first years of the siege.
She met and married Hamza al-Kateab, a doctor who ran a makeshift hospital in the besieged eastern part of the city. Her filming became inseparable from the hospital's story: the doctors who stayed, the impossible choices about who could be saved, the regular bombardment that damaged and destroyed medical facilities.
She became pregnant. She continued filming. Her daughter Sama was born in the hospital in a city under siege, in 2016, during the final and most intense phase of the bombardment.
Confirmed(85%)Sensitivity: medium
02
Chapter 02custom02 / 02
For Sama — A Letter to Her Daughter, A Record for the World
After evacuating from east Aleppo in December 2016, Waad al-Kateab took her footage — years of film — to London. She collaborated with British filmmaker Edward Watts to edit it into a documentary: 'For Sama' (لأجل سما).
The film is structured as a letter from Waad to her daughter Sama, asking her someday to understand why her parents chose to stay in a besieged city, why they brought her into that world, why what they were witnessing mattered enough to stay for.
'For Sama' premiered at South by Southwest (SXSW) in 2019, where it won the Grand Jury Prize in documentary film. It won the BAFTA for Best Documentary. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
The film brought east Aleppo to audiences in a way that no number of statistics or political analyses had managed. It was intimate, personal, devastating — a mother and father's love story inside a catastrophe. Audiences in London, New York, and Paris who had watched the fall of east Aleppo as a news story experienced it, through the film, as a human story.
Al-Kateab became an international advocate for Syria and for journalists working in conflict zones. She testified at the UN Security Council. She met with world leaders. She co-founded Action for Sama, a campaign for accountability in Syria.
Her daughter Sama — born in the siege, now growing up in London — became the symbol of a generation of Syrian children whose early lives had been shaped entirely by the war.
The film is structured as a letter from Waad to her daughter Sama, asking her someday to understand why her parents chose to stay in a besieged city, why they brought her into that world, why what they were witnessing mattered enough to stay for.
'For Sama' premiered at South by Southwest (SXSW) in 2019, where it won the Grand Jury Prize in documentary film. It won the BAFTA for Best Documentary. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
The film brought east Aleppo to audiences in a way that no number of statistics or political analyses had managed. It was intimate, personal, devastating — a mother and father's love story inside a catastrophe. Audiences in London, New York, and Paris who had watched the fall of east Aleppo as a news story experienced it, through the film, as a human story.
Al-Kateab became an international advocate for Syria and for journalists working in conflict zones. She testified at the UN Security Council. She met with world leaders. She co-founded Action for Sama, a campaign for accountability in Syria.
Her daughter Sama — born in the siege, now growing up in London — became the symbol of a generation of Syrian children whose early lives had been shaped entirely by the war.
Confirmed(85%)Sensitivity: medium
Full Source List
01
Waad al-Kateab: Filming Aleppo from insideChannel 4 News
Continue the Journey
Explore other journeys in this documentary archive
All Journeys