How to you begin to describe FOR SAMA? You don’t – you tell others to watch it. It’s not just a documentary, but a chronicle of a remarkable life in the most tragic of circumstances, an important socio-historical document and the purest of emotional odysseys. Documenting the experiences of video journalist Waad Al-Kateab, her husband and her children in bombed-out Aleppo, Al-Kateab is on the front line, in the heart of the chaos, trying to maintain a life among the rubble. No-one in Aleppo escaped the ruination of their city, but Al-Kateab’s need to record the nightmare for the world and for her daughter, in addition to her husband’s vital work at one of the few remaining hospitals, puts her where fighting is the thickest. It might have started as a way to preserve memories of life good and bad for her daughter, but Al-Kateab’s For Sama is now a harrowing, necessary and spiritually restorative documentary for the world. SSP