For Sama (Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts, UK) won the VPRO IDFA Audience Award, the grand public prize of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, valued at €5,000.
For Sama is the first documentary of 26-year-old citizen journalist Waad al-Kateab. In the film, she dedicates the film to her newborn daughter: “I need you to understand why your father and I made the choices we did, what we were fighting for.”
With a simple digital camera, al-Kateab documents the Syrian uprising against Assad in the rebel stronghold of Aleppo, from the first moments of the uprising through to the forced evacuation at the end of 2016.
This year 166 films were in the race for the Audience Award. For Sama narrowly beat off The Cave (Ferras Fayad, Denmark), Collective (Alexander Nanau, Romania/Lux), They Call Me Babu(Sandra Beerends, The Netherlands) and Honeyland (Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska, North Macedonia) to gain top spot.
