Waad al-Kateab
Media TribeShaunagh talks to Waad al-Kateab
Waad is an award-winning Syrian filmmaker. She became a citizen journalist in 2011, after protests broke out across Syria against the Assad regime, and in January 2016 she began documenting the horrors of Aleppo for Channel 4 News in a series titled, “Inside Aleppo.”
Waad’s first feature documentary, For Sama, documented her life over five years in Aleppo. The film, directed with Edward Watts, received worldwide critical acclaim, winning numerous awards, including the Prix L'Œil d'or for best documentary at Cannes Film Festival, Best Documentary at the BAFTAs and a nomination for Best Documentary Feature at the 2020 Academy Awards.
After fleeing Aleppo in December 2016, Waad, her husband, and their two daughters now reside in London, United Kingdom. Waad continues to work with Channel 4 News and dedicates time to her advocacy campaign, Action For Sama.
For more on Waad
Follow Waad on Twitter and Instagram and follow Action for Sama on Twitter.
Episode credits
Hosted and produced by Shaunagh Connaire and edited by Ryan Ferguson.
Episode transcript
Shaunagh Connaire:
Welcome to Media Tribe. I'm Shaunagh Connaire, and this is the podcast that tells the story behind the story. It's an opportunity for you and I to step into the shoes of the most extraordinary media folk who cover the issues that matter most.
Waad al-Kateab
Today, we live in London with Summer and we are just trying to capture that dream of the revolution. Now it's been nine years since it started. We lost so many things. We lost our country, but at the same time, we still have hope that what we are doing is the right thing.
Shaunagh Connaire
This week's guest is Oscar-nominated BAFTA and Emmy award-winning Syrian director Waad AlKateab. Waad is best known for her feature film, For Sama, where over the course of five years, she documented her and her family's life in Aleppo. Waad, lovely to see you.
Waad al-Kateab
Thank you. Lovely to see you again.
Shaunagh Connaire
Yes. I think it was about this time last year we were both very sweaty outside a New York cinema, where you had done a screening of For Sama. And I remember I was heavily pregnant and you were so lovely and came over to me to ask me if I was okay having just watched your extraordinary and Oscar-nominated film.
Waad al-Kateab
Yeah, I was pregnant when I did the film, and then while the film was showing out, I was very worried about every other woman who was pregnant. And sometimes when I'm telling anyone, and I think we had that conversation that day, "Are you okay to watch it?" And then you looked at me and like, "You were pregnant too." I was like, "Yeah, but I don't know why I'm more worried about other people."
Shaunagh Connaire
Waad, do you want to kick-start the conversation and tell our audience how you became such a renowned, lauded and genuinely, probably one of the most well-respected female filmmakers of our time?
Waad al-Kateab
So thank you for telling this, first. I mean, I started my journey in journalism in 2011 when the Syrian revolution started, and at that time I had no idea that this is the journey to be a journalist. I was just trying to record everything that was happening. Take videos, photos, sometimes just sound, to what was happening at Aleppo University. We joined the protest and we were very proud that we are doing that. But at the same time, we saw that everything around gave us the feeling that we are ignored and the regime was denying everything was happening. You can see how the security forces came to the university to beat people, sometimes shot students just because they were protesting. And it was just our responsibility to save what was happening.
Waad al-Kateab
And that was the time I started to know more how to film, and I started to take more videos. And gradually after five years, I became stringer to one international channel, which is Channel 4 News here in the UK. And I was just trying to make our voice being out because we were besieged in a city where everything around is collapsing and the only way for me to keep going and feel that I'm still alive, that I'm recording and I'm doing something important.
Shaunagh Connaire
Extraordinary, Waad. And you didn't go to Aleppo back in 2011 to study filmmaking. You were going to study marketing and economics. Is that right?
Waad al-Kateab
Yeah. I was at the fourth year, but then I stopped and I started filming.
Shaunagh Connaire
I'm sure our audience know this, but back in 2011 it was peaceful protests. It was a revolution. It was a time full of hope. And I'm sure you never imagined that you would stay on for five more years and, and experience the shelling, the barrel bombs, the cluster bombs, as you did. Do you want to tell our audience a bit about your real life while you were there?
Waad al-Kateab
Yeah. I mean, when the Syrian revolution was started, it was not a very big question. It was not confusing at all to know which side do you want to be. And it was very clear that this protest is leading for a better country, for democracy, for freedom, and that's when we should take a place. And it's not just for us to stay aside and watch what happen and then do this. It was our only opportunity to do something and to change our life for the better.
Waad al-Kateab
Before this, actually, I was planning to go outside of Syria and to graduate and then go to Germany. Just for more like explanation, most of my colleagues and my friends at the university had the same dream. Even Hamza, who I didn't know at that time, he was planning to go to Germany and he was doing language courses.
Waad al-Kateab
So for us as Syrians, we've never felt that we belong to Syria or we feel any contact between us and Syria as a country. And when the Syrian revolution started, it was the first time when we felt that no, this is our country. We have a stake in this. We are able to do something. And that hope gave us everything we've done even before and even after. And just like the feeling that you are alongside with thousands of people who are chanting for something... Maybe you don't know, but you wanted... We didn't know what freedom means. We were watching that just through the TV, or to look at your country, to so many other countries, but we've never known really what was happening. But we knew that's what was missing in ours. And just with the time, and with everything happened later, when knew that there's so much difficult and so much risk in all of these things, but when you're at the same time, there is no return to what we had before.
Shaunagh Connaire
Wow. And Waad, at that time, were you 19 or 20? I mean, you were very, very young.
Waad al-Kateab
Yeah. I was 21.
Shaunagh Connaire
It's hard to remember that because you are very young, but you have a very wise head on your shoulders as well. Then my next question, Waad, and it's a question I ask all of my guests, and it's whether you as a filmmaker can pinpoint a moment where you had impact. And I'm very much hoping you tell me and our audience all about For Sama and what For Sama is and what it means.
Waad al-Kateab
I mean, it's very moving for me even today because when we were working on the film, me and my co-director Edward Watts, we just started right after I lost Aleppo and lost every hope I had. And I know that I have some impact for moments before, when I started working with Channel 4 News and my reports start to be very wide word, and when I saw how many people seeing this reports, but I know at the same time that the real impact I wanted is not how much people will see this, but it's really if we can change that situation.
Waad al-Kateab
And because after everything people saw, nothing changed and we're forced to flee out, and we saw what you saw in the film at the end. It was just very hard moments. And for me, I thought that what I'm doing now, just something to look back at my story, to save that story and save this history and not make our story be told with the enemy, with the regime, with the Russian propaganda, but with our hands, with our eyes, with our lenses. And for this I thought that there's a very big responsibility for me to do the film.
Waad al-Kateab
I'm not expecting anything out of this. I don't expect that any people will come to watch this film, but I wanted just to make it through two years of working on the film. So many people told us the same exactly. "Don't expect that anyone will come to watch another Syrian film." And even me and Edward in one place or another, we felt that, yeah, maybe they are right. So we need just to focus on the film itself and make it justice to this material, but not expect any impact out of that.
Waad al-Kateab
And I remember really the first time I said alongside with audience, it was at South by Southwest in Texas, me and so many other of our team, we were just all together. And we were waiting to know how many people would leave before the film would be finished. And for maybe the first half an hour, it was silent. And I was just really terrified how people would react to this. And when no one left until the film was finished, and then even when we get out on the stage, we had standing ovation. People were sitting for the whole Q&A. And I mean, there was something where it was so terrifying. I couldn't believe that people really connected with the film to this point. And every other screening, even maybe a year after this, I'd still have that feeling that maybe people now will not love it, or will feel so bad that they will not be connected to the film, or they will not understand, but I was really wrong. And that's the impact that the film done.
Waad al-Kateab
I mean, the most important things for me was when people come to us and ask us, "What can we do?" And I think really this question, which I really had at every screening, I feel that I've done my job when I did this. And this is the most impactful moment for me, when people come to ask me, "What can we do?" And that's so important, because I feel that people are not just moved by the film, but also they feel some responsibility. They share with us this hope and this disappointing and these moments when they feel like, "Yeah, we want to do something for these people. It's not just a film to watch."
Shaunagh Connaire
Wow. Well, you couldn't have been more wrong, Waad, in terms of how people would react, I think. I mean, you really did, yourself and Edward Watts your co-director, stole hearts and minds all around the world. And for anybody who hasn't seen For Sama, for whatever reason that is, it's a 90-minute film that was condensed out of 500 hours of footage, I believe, and that you filmed, Waad, in Aleppo over the course of five years. And it's been described as a love letter to your daughter Sama, who you gave birth to in Aleppo in the toughest of war zones. Do you want to tell our audience a little bit about Sama, your beautiful daughter? And then of course, Hamza, the other narrative line, where you fell in love with your friend and now your husband Hamza, got married in Aleppo, and Hamza is of course, an amazing doctor who was working in the only hospital left standing because the regime had bombed and burned out every other hospital in Aleppo.
Waad al-Kateab
Yeah. So I met Hamza in the protests first at Aleppo University and at the time we became friends. We were working together coordinating for the protests and doing some work related to the peaceful protests. And then with the time we met again, a year later or something, in the front line when he was a doctor there and I was coming to film, and then we started that amazing relationship with him and so many other people at the hospital. And then I lived there with them. And with the time there was something, we really became more close and more clear that there is something not just like friends. I mean, Hamza, for everyone who saw the film, you can see how he's an amazing guy. I can't not say that because I'm really still in love with him until today, so much.
Waad al-Kateab
So he's a very smiley guy. He's all the time positive in everything he's thinking of. He's a very gentle and strong guy, and also takes so much responsibility, over what he even can carry. And it was for me something I thought a lot about before I took that decision because whatever you have in your mind, but when there is a relationship where we are getting married, when we have a child, this is totally different experience. And especially that you are in a place where you can't protect yourself, to protect other people. So this will be more responsibility for both of us to try to protect this little family and this little life which we are trying to create in that position.
Waad al-Kateab
But with two crazy people like me and Hamza to have something, we were just trying to enjoy every minute, trying to ignore all the deaths around us. And I'm glad that we did this because at the end, everything was quite fine with us as a small family. Of course we lost so many people around us and it could be at any second any one of us, but at the end, you can see in the film what happened and how things were very weird and unique at the same time. Today we live in London. Sama was one year old when we left Syria and we are just trying to survive all that memories and all that feeling with guilt about being out and not being in any more.
Waad al-Kateab
And also trying to capture that dream of the revolution. Now it's been nine years since it started. We lost so many things. We lost our country, but at the same time, we still have hope that what we are doing is the right thing. And for me now to keep telling the story, for Hamza to find his way to work with doctors and hospitals inside Syria, and to even do something personal ourselves, hoping that one day we'll be back to Syria. I think that's the only thing how we're still managing to survive this moment.
Shaunagh Connaire
I know you've been asked this so many times, but how did you make that decision as a mum? Having that deep love for your baby, how did you reconcile that with staying on in a war zone where you knew you were all in so much danger, because obviously you were living in the hospital as well?
Waad al-Kateab
So I think because we lived through the first two years of the revolution when it was very peaceful and we were part of that movement, we knew that... I mean, of course always there is an option for you to leave, and there is a choice for you or if you want to stay or not. But for us both, we were so much in it to the point that even when we got married, we had that very serious conversation both, because we saw so many other couples around us in that position. We seriously had that conversation about... We were both telling each other, "Look, if you felt at any second you want to leave, I mean, you can go, but I'm not going with you." And Hamza was telling me exactly the same. So we were fine.
Waad al-Kateab
You don't know how things could change. And the only thing that we both believe that we want to stay here forever. And I think that's why it was very strongly feeling between both of us. And if any of us like felt at any second, "We are tired. We don't want to continue here," we should not force the other to go out. And we both were sharing the same vision of how it's very important for us to stay. And when we left, it wasn't even our choice to leave. And that's what gave us that feeling now that we did everything we could have done before and what happened has happened.
Waad al-Kateab
But at the same time, there is so much hope that even if we lost everything, even today, even after more years when nothing could change in Syria, but we know that there are things we've done when the revolution started and the right thing we've done when we were in Aleppo, and we are not just two people who want to live there, but I'm a journalist, he is a doctor. We have so much responsibility. We have so much work to do. And maybe we can't change the whole situation, but we were able to do small things where it makes impact, for the people who are living in that situation, for us as people, and I think for the whole history for forever.
Shaunagh Connaire
Absolutely, Waad. And I think it's obviously really important to mention Action For Sama, which everybody should go and follow on Twitter and follow the work that you're trying to do since releasing the film. So you're essentially trying to push for accountability for war crimes under the Assad regime. And I guess Syria has fallen out of the news at the moment, so everybody needs to use their voice if they can, follow your work and help amplify your voice as well, Waad. I'd love to ask you, there's a scene where the mum who's nine months pregnant comes in with the baby and things don't look so good. That was certainly the moment that I felt definitely tipped me over the edge. It was so desperately terrifying and sad. Do you want to tell our audience a little bit about that, because you were there behind your viewfinder?
Waad al-Kateab
Yeah. I mean that day was just... I don't know how to explain this. I just gave birth to Sama in the same room, three months before that thing happened. I was in the ER as normal day. And we heard bumping around, and then injured people start to come to the hospital. And I remember how I saw this pregnant woman carried by people to get down to the operation room and I just followed her. And yeah, I mean, I was in the operation room when the baby was out, and as you see in the film, it's just totally blue and you can't see any signs that this baby could be alive or something. I was filming the baby and focusing on this baby.
Waad al-Kateab
He didn't be alive yet. If all of us deserve to be killed in the regime's opinion, this baby, he's not even alive yet. And this is just a crime more than any other crime. And I was thinking that this is very important to be out. This is just a baby. He was alive when he was dead. I mean, it's so confusing and so hard. And I thought that this is very important to be documented and to be out to the people to see this. And at the same time, as a mom, and I just said this, I gave birth to Sama in the same room exactly. So I was just, "What if that was me?" And, "It could be me," and so much things coming to my mind.
Waad al-Kateab
But every couple of seconds I wanted to just to turn the camera off and run out. And there was something in my mind and in my heart telling me, what I'm feeling now, it's very important that I should ignore this feeling and just focus on of the importance of making these pictures out. And suddenly I've seen what you've seen, and I was behind the camera that second. And then I looked behind the camera to the front to see in my own eyes, and it was real. And it was really looking around. And I can't believe into today when he opened his eyes. Not just like any normal child when they open. I mean, it gave us so much hope for the whole of our life. For me, that moment is enough, and anything I will go through in my life, when I remember this one, everything will be fine.
Shaunagh Connaire
It's such an amazing moment in the film. And I guess that wee baby is just such a symbol of resilience and defiance. It's such a beautiful moment, as it is heartbreaking, but you've so many of those moments, Waad, in your film. And also there's such a poignant line that it really gets me every time, and it's in the trailer as well, where you say, "You're not like normal babies, because you don't cry." When you feel those types of emotions as a mum, how did that make you feel?
Waad al-Kateab
I mean, I'm sure you know this as a mom. We have so much moments when we feel upside-down in three seconds. And yeah, I mean, in that situation, that was more and more often happening, because in one second you feel hope. In another second you feel like there's no hope at all. And I don't know really how I managed to survive all of these things, but I think having Sama herself was something, managing this, and having Hamza on the other side was something else. Being a woman in that situation, seeing other women and friends who I was taking so much strength from, like [Afra 00:22:07] and her kids.
Waad al-Kateab
Also being a filmmaker and having the camera and having that reason to be there and to do everything I've done. I think all of these things together, they were becoming more clear why we were there, how important is it. And I think like any mom, we have so much things we can do. I mean, medical things together at the same time. And I think just being a mom, that was something maybe make me weak in some places, but I'm sure it make me stronger in so many other places.
Shaunagh Connaire
Exactly. And so well-put, Waad. And also it's just really worth pointing out the obvious, that what you did is so different to any other filmmaker really who's covered Syria, or international correspondent who's covered Syria, because you weren't dipping in and out of a location. You were on home turf, documenting where you lived, which is such a harder thing for anybody to do and there's so much more risks involved. And I'm just so glad that that was recognized in the gazillion awards that you've won now at this point. My last question, I'm dying to know your answer actually, but is there a crazy moment since becoming a fabulous filmmaker that you can tell our audience a little bit about that we don't know about, that never made the For Sama cut or never made any of your brilliant reports from Channel 4 News as well? But you've worked with Ed, so feel free to land him in it as well.
Waad al-Kateab
Oh my God. If you want to involve Ed, I have a very good story about this. I met Ed for the first time in London, in February or early March. And we met in a bar with [Nevine and Siobhan 00:23:55], both our [inaudible 00:00:23:57]. I walked out from that meeting. It was the first time we talk about, we want to do a film. I have so much footage. And I wasn't happy at all with that meeting. I walked out from that, I called Hamza and I was upset and angry, and I was shouting. Even in the phone, I'm telling him, "Oh, Hamza, look, they brought me a child. He's very young. I don't want to have someone who I can help. I want someone to help me." And I remember exactly that the table was very high and I barely can see [Nick 00:24:31] on that table.
Waad al-Kateab
I'm very short. He's very tall. But that was my feeling after that meeting. There's maybe about 15, 17-years-old child who's coming to work with me. And so I was very angry. And then I walked out from that meeting. I went back home. I told him I will not work with this guy. And literally I was just like all the time saying, "This kid, this kid, this kid." And four months later or something, Nevine called me. She said "Oh, so the director will come to Istanbul. Let's meet there." They were saying, "Yeah. Okay." So I went to Istanbul, I met with Ed. I was like, "Wow, that's good. I'm glad that he's not that guy." And then we worked for around 10 days together. We watched so many materials. We did amazing conversations.
Waad al-Kateab
And my other point about that kid was, he doesn't know anything about Syria. He doesn't know anything even in film-making. So I don't want to work with him. And the last day before we leave from Istanbul, I've talked with Ed and told him, "I'm very glad that they brought you now, because the guy that was before you, I didn't like him." And he was like, "They brought you another one before me?" I was like, "Yeah, he was idiot guy. He is a kid. He's very young." And he was very confused about what I said.
Waad al-Kateab
But then he wanted to clarify exactly if Channel 4 brought another director before him. And then he was like, "When did you meet him? How he looked like?" I was like, "I don't know. I met him in London. He was very young. Very idiot. Very stupid. He doesn't know anything about Syria," and I was like, "We met in [inaudible 00:26:23] with Nevine and Siobhan," and then Ed was like, "Waad, it's me." And I was like, "No, it can't be you." And I didn't believe that until I called Nevine and I asked her if Ed is the same guy we met in London.
Shaunagh Connaire
Brilliant.
Waad al-Kateab
Then for the whole other years of 14 together, every time we were arguing or something, I was telling him, "That's not you. This is your youngest child."
Shaunagh Connaire
Oh, that's [inaudible 00:26:52]. And you know what? You obviously made a fantastic team, the pair of you, because For Sama really is a film that will stay with you forever. And we should leave it there, Waad, and anybody who hasn't seen For Sama, go and bloody watch it, and follow you on Twitter or Instagram, and also go and follow Action For Sama and start using your voice. Waad, thank you so much.
Waad al-Kateab
Thank you so much.
Shaunagh Connaire
If you liked what you heard on this episode of Media Tribe, tune in next week, as I'll be dropping new shows every week with all sorts of legendary folk from the industry. And if you could leave me a review and rating, that would be really appreciated. Also get in touch on social media, @Shaunagh on Twitter or @ShaunaghConnaire on Instagram and feel free to suggest new guests. Right, that's it. Until next week. See you then. This episode is edited by Ryan Ferguson.
