“Remarkable Moment”: After Fleeing Syria, “For Sama” Director Waad Al-Kateab Celebrates End of Assad

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue to look at the fall of the Assad regime with activist and award-winning filmmaker Waad Al-Kateab. She was forcibly displaced from her hometown of Aleppo with her family in 2016. Her Oscar-nominated film For Sama, released in 2019, offered a rare glimpse into Syria’s civil war. The devastating account was filmed over the course of five years, starting in 2011 during the uprising in Aleppo. Amidst airstrikes and attacks on hospitals, Waad falls in love with one of the last remaining doctors in Aleppo, gets married, has a baby girl Sama, to whom the film is dedicated. When protests against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad first began in 2011, she was a young economics student who began filming on a cellphone. This is a clip from For Sama.

WAAD AL-KATEAB: [translated] Sama, things have got so bad now. Your dad can’t leave the hospital, so we live here now. This is our room. Behind those pictures are sandbags to protect from shelling.

Yes, I’m coming.

We do our best to make it feel like home.

AMY GOODMAN: The sound of a bomb. We now go to London, where we’re joined by Waad Al-Kateab, Syrian filmmaker, activist, co-founder of Action For Sama.

Your thoughts today? As we listen to the bomb exploding as you’re with your baby, tell us where that was in Aleppo and what your hopes are for the future, Waad?

WAAD AL-KATEAB: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. And just really, I don’t have maybe the right words really to explain. I’ll do my best. Sorry.

But, like, for years, for these last 13 years, I don’t think any Syrian have seen the light at the end of the tunnel. There was something, it was keeping us moving forward, keeping us fighting. And we just, like, didn’t want to lose. And, you know, today, what happened, and this feeling today is just something. I’m over the moon, in one second, happy, dancing, laughing, and then so much crying and pain and grief and mourning, I think. It’s just — I’m so happy and grateful for where we are today.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about what hope you have for the future, how you see a new Syria emerging, and who will be the players, and how people like you, an activist deeply involved with Syria, though you left, forced out of Aleppo, what, like eight years ago, what your plans are? Will you return?

WAAD AL-KATEAB: Yeah, I mean, since the Syrian revolution started in 2011, that was the time when I and so many other Syrians have felt that we belong to this country, we can fight for this country, we can own our country. And, you know, today, we do have the same feeling exactly as 2011. This conversation about what’s going to happen next, who’s going to rule, how the government would look like, all of this conversation, we were thinking about that like 11 and like 13 years ago, as well. And the last five, six, seven years, I think it was just so much of no end and no hope, no justice.

And, you know, today, when we are looking at all of this, yes, there is concern. Yes, there is so much things to worry about. And there’s a huge work to be done. There’s a long path forward. But we can’t, like, forget or not acknowledge and not feel. And this is now a moment, a remarkable moment, in our history, in our life in Syria.

Whatever is coming next, I don’t believe at all that would be worse than what we’ve been through, what we lived through, this for 13 years of being sieged in our own cities, being bombed, being attacked, hospitals, schools, prisoners, people who are detained. Whatever this future would hold, you know, if we managed to go through this, if we are now on the other side — and we are — I don’t believe that whatever happened will be worse than what we’ve been through already.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned now about the possibilities, for example, HTS, the leading the way for the overthrow of Assad; the leader of HTS, Julani, what he represents? How will everyday Syrians or Syrian civil society control the future?

WAAD AL-KATEAB: Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely concern, but they are coming on a long list of concern. For me, this is one thing which is definitely important and fair, but, again, there’s much more things to be looking at, especially today, which I think you mentioned that earlier on, when Israel, you know, at al-Jolan area and the bombing of some areas and stuff in Syria, the Turkish involvement, the U.S. involvement. Like, there’s so many players who are working on Syria. HTS is definitely one of these players.

And it is, like, what we see on the ground, and this is — I think it’s something, even for us, we’re still trying to process and understand. For years, you know, these statements, even when it’s like much less, different from how HTS think, it used to be only statements. It was not matching what was going on on the ground. Today, what we’ve seen in the last, like, 11, 12 days, it was just something so much different, in everything, not just the statements, and how this group and other groups who are — were leading this battle today are thinking, but also on the ground. We all have connection there, and we’ve heard from so many people. We’re looking at all the footage that’s coming out. We did already set up, like, groups where we are organizing what’s going on in the new liberated cities. And what we are hearing from people on the ground are very much similar to what we have seen in the statements.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, let me ask you — 

WAAD AL-KATEAB: I have so much hope —

AMY GOODMAN: The voices of Syrian women are so often underrepresented. Your journey from student activist to award-winning filmmaker has been extraordinary. How do you see your role fitting into the future as a storyteller and an advocate? We have 30 seconds.

WAAD AL-KATEAB: Yeah, I think we’ve seen this dream of free Syria like 13 years ago, and we thought at some point this will never be happening. Today, it is happening. It’s real. We have so much work to be done. We have so much lobbying within our community. You know, like, the Syrian people were divided by the Syrian regime for years, and now is the time to live together, to move forward, to think together, to see this future that’s coming together. And this is now the reality of the situation. So, yes, so much hope, so much amazing feeling, and our hearts still with everyone who’s still waiting for their beloved ones who they were disappeared in Assad’s prisons for so many years.

AMY GOODMAN: And how old is your daughter today?

WAAD AL-KATEAB: My daughter now is 9, and my second daughter is 7.

AMY GOODMAN: Waad Al-Kateab, I thank you so much for being with us, award-winning Syrian filmmaker, her film, For Sama. This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.