Cinema World Tour, Film #42
Country: Syria
Rating: 10/10
Yesterday, I watched Joshua Oppenheimer's incredible documentary The Act of Killing for the first time and wrote here that I've found the world's most important, best and especially scariest documentary. Well, maybe I have to redeem that just one day after. The reason for this is that I watched this masterpiece from Syria.
For Sama is a film you can't possibly compare to anything existing out there. Everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone, should watch this. The war in Syria is one of the most complex conflicts in th world, there are so many parties fighting against each other that it's hard to say who is on whose side. Even though I study political science and I've read a lot about it, I find it quite hard to summarize what exactly is going on in Syria. There are the peaceful activists and militant activists in the Syrian cities against the Assad regime. There is Russia, supporting Assad. There are western countries fighting against Assad. There is ISIS which took advantage from the instable situation and used the revolution for their own purposes. There are the Kurdish anarchists in Rojava (North-East Syria) fighting against ISIS and Assad. There is Turkey under Erdogan fighting against the Kurdish anarchists. As you see, pretty complicated. But mainly, western people have so many stereotypes when it comes to Syria. They often think Syrian people (and immigrants) are barbaric people who just made war because they love war, as everyone does in the Middle East. Hearing something like this makes me so, so angry. And then, there comes an activist like Waad and makes this heartbreaking and shaking documentary for her daughter and the rest of the world. A documentary from the perspective of the revolutionaries. It shows the Syrian people as peace-loving and optimistic humans who started the revolution simply because they were dreaming of a better future for their children and themselves. This documentary shows you that no immigrant actually leaves his home because he genuinely wants to. They simply have no other choice. Waad and Hamza are exceptional heroes, but what they did can't be expected from anyone.
This documentary was harder and more disturbing to experience than anything else I've ever watched. Some scenes made me hold my breath for minutes, shouting out loud, some moved me to tears. There's that one crazy scene in which a baby is reanimated, one of the most intense scenes of all time. The film often brings you to your limits, and you keep asking yourself whether that's still appropiate and morally right to film these attrocities to such an extent – the thing is, if all this woud have been filmed by a foreign journalist reporting on the hospital, definitely NOT. But as all this has been filmed only by the woman who runs the hospital together with her husband, it's morally okay to film this, because it's from a victim's point of view. Because Waad wants to show the world what's actually going on, not the rather objective side we could experience comfortably from home on the news channels.
While this documentary should hopefully convince éven the most right-wing asshole that all refugees have a right on asylum, what Waad and Hamza did instead of fleeing is an act of insanity. As I wrote before, you can't expect from anyone to do the same as they did: stay in East Aleppo until literally NOBODY was left. These people move me to tears, and I'm so glad there is a film on them which got so popular. The whole world should know about them and be inspired by them to do more good and complain less. The most amazing part of watching Waad and Hamza is their incredible optimism. Even when everyone around them is dying and they have to make 6000 operations in only 20 days, they still don't lose their humor, the laughters and the intimacy. And even more amazing is that despite the hopeless situation, they both believe in the revolution until the very end. There are no persons in the world I admire as much as revolutionaries, and Waad and Hamza are simply inspiring. The fact that they've been in Turkey when Syria got locked and came back to Aleppo illegally through the front lines just to not let down their comrades at home is unbelievably heroic. These people were ready to die for the cause and should be an inspiration for the whole world. It makes me feel ashamed watching these people fighting against unjustice in the world while I could also do so much more – everyone could.
Everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone, should watch this film. Not only to be inspired by these people, but also just for the sake of knowing that these people exist. Some people – them including – just deserve to be portrayed in a film, and those films deserve to be watched. A shame that For Sama didn't win that Best Documentary Oscar. Maybe it was too revolutionary for the Oscars.
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