DUBAI: Waad Al-Kateab, activist and award-winning Syrian director of the film, “For Sama,” has spoken out since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“The past couple of days have been so emotional for me and so many other Syrians,” Al-Kateab said in an Instagram post.
She continued: “We carry a pain bigger than this world, and because of our trauma, we don’t know how to celebrate, and we cannot believe that tomorrow might really hold something better.
“Today, there’s a huge joy but it doesn’t feel real.”
Her film, “For Sama,” won several awards at the BAFTA and British Independent Film Awards and was nominated at multiple prestigious international film festivals including the Oscars.
The film documents her family life in Aleppo over five years, including her marriage and the birth of her first child, Sama, who the film is named after.
“The greatest heartbreak of my life is that I can’t take my daughters to live in or even visit the place where they should belong to; the place where they should grow up,” Al-Kateab said.
“For Sama” was a “promise to myself and my daughters that I will never forget Aleppo.”
In 2016, Al-Kateab and her husband fled to the UK.
She said: “Before we left, we said goodbye to everything. We left our hearts and moved forward, terrified that we might not even make it out.”
The collapse of Assad’s regime is a monumental event for many Syrians living abroad.
Al-Kateab has been disconnected from her family in Syria because contacting them could put them at risk, but now she looks forward to visiting her home country, she told The Times.
She said: “This was the first time I called my auntie (and) uncle. I managed to talk to my cousins, who were five or six years old when I left, and now they are teenagers.
“We are waiting to get British citizenship — without the British passport I won’t be able to travel for that.”
Looking forward, Al-Kateab added: “The chapter of Assad has finished and I don’t want anything for his system or mentality or rules to be taken with us to the next chapter.”
She called for foreign powers to leave Syria saying: “I really hope to see the minimizing of outside intervention.”
Al-Kateab also appealed to the international community to implement a no-fly zone to protect civilians.
“Everyone who has different fears agrees that the biggest risk and the threat is coming from the sky — the Syrian and Russian airstrike attacks. And for that, the international community needs to prioritize protecting civilians from such attacks,” she said on Instagram.
Al-Kateab’s other work includes “We Dare to Dream” and “Death Without Mercy”.
