"Remarkable Moment": After Fleeing Syria, "For Sama" Director Waad Al-Kateab Celebrates End of Assad

“Whatever’s coming next, I don’t believe at all that [it] would be worse than what we’ve been through, what we lived through,” says Syrian activist and filmmaker Waad Al-Kateab as she celebrates the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship to Syrian opposition groups. Al-Kateab, who was forced to flee her hometown of Aleppo with her family in 2016 and now resides in the United Kingdom, says the end of Assad’s rule has reignited the “dream of a free Syria.” Her Oscar-nominated documentary film For Sama, released in 2019, offered a rare glimpse into Syria’s civil war. The devastating personal account was filmed over the course of five years during the uprising in Aleppo and is dedicated to Al-Kateab’s daughter Sama.