For Sama director Waad Al-Kateab: 'London feels like a second home'

The Syrian refugee behind the documentary last night named best British independent film of the year has said London now “feels like a second home”.

Waad Al-Kateab shot For Sama inside Aleppo during five years of conflict. It follows the young mother and her daughter, Sama, navigating life as the shells fall. It shows the reality of of children’s bodies strewn across floors and hospitals running out of medicine, while Al-Kateab and her medic husband, Hamza, try to create a life for their child.

Some of the filmmaker’s footage was included in Channel 4 News coverage, and in fear for their lives at the hands of the Assad regime, the family fled first to Turkey and then to London in May 2018, where they now live as refugees.

Speaking after collecting four awards at the 22nd British Independent Film Awards at Old Billingsgate, Al-Kateab told the Standard: “I just feel like this is the first step of my career here, and I hope I can continue it.

“I feel like this is my second home now. I really love it, I love the people here, and there has been a great welcome from everyone I know.

“There is also a great Syrian community here who have welcomed us a lot.”

Co-director Edward Watts, who sifted through 500 hours of footage with Al-Kateab to make the documentary, said: “Wherever we go in the world with the film, Cannes, America, everywhere, she goes ‘it’s not like London, it’s not as good as we have in London’, she’s a proper Londoner.

“Giving us this award shows that even Brexit Britain still cares about the fate of people who live thousands of miles away, and we are still engaged in their journey and their struggle for freedom, and that means a lot because I was born in London, and that is the spirit.”