Review of ‘For Sama’ (2019) for the Hawai’i International Film Festival ‘Film for Thought’ Collection
The following invited review was published as part of the Hawai’i Council for the Humanities and Hawai’i International Film Festival Film for Thought 2019 - Change Makers collection:
FOR SAMA communicates the impossible cruelty of a war where the most vulnerable people—children, women, the sick, the elderly—were not merely casualties of this conflict, but were in fact its primary targets. Many viewers in the US and Hawai‘i will have almost no frame of reference for understanding the events portrayed in this film, nor the privileged position that allows the cruelty and sadism of war to remain merely concepts, rather than the reality of daily life. By showing that so many victims were children, the documentary shatters the Western fantasy of childhood innocence, forcing us to take seriously that there is nothing sacred or off limits in the moral depravity of warfare today. Those who survived did not do so because they were good people, or because they had resources, support, or allyship. Survival simply came from the barest and most random of chance, and where geopolitics found it more convenient to allow for escape rather than pursue annihilation.
At the time of the military siege from 2012 to 2016, international media regularly covered these civilian deaths, as well as the use of chemical weapons and barrel bombs, and of course, the Syrian “refugee crisis” in Europe. These images of catastrophe convinced many that there was nothing that could be done, while little coverage was given to those Syrians who decided to stay in Aleppo. FOR SAMA reveals the possibility of making a life—and even new lives—among such conditions, and in a place now mostly known internationally for devastation and destruction. What is documented in such a remarkable way in this film is the resolve of a handful of people in providing refuge for thousands of others. The force of life so evident in the film’s tender moments, and in the midst of the most profound violence, shows us that those who Waad encounters are more than the helpless victims of humanitarian concern. The people whose lives are portrayed in this film bear the true weight of horror, but lose none of their humanity in their struggle to be there for each other when they were targeted by their state, and abandoned by the international community.
Rather than merely pity those who did not survive the war, or celebrate those for whom good fortune and resolve made them heroes, this film compels us to consider what responsibilities the international community has to the 11 million internally and externally displaced Syrian refugees seeking protection from this catastrophe. When claims are made in European and US media about the practical limits of accepting refugees, and when decisions about future refugee policies are framed in terms of charity and generosity, the stories contained in FOR SAMA should also be considered in the context of international obligations to respond to genocide, rather than only a question of good will.
