Watched For Sama with W on Leap Day.
(Also on Leap Day this year: yoga was attempted, a cat stuck at height was rescued, much hipstery food was consumed, tabletop games were played, not much actual leaping was done.)

For Sama is really a story about the mess in Syria for the rest of us elsewhere in the world. Sama = سماء = Sky is a nice name for a cute little girl… and that’s about the only thing that was nice in this film. Everything else, the sounds of shelling and gunfire, the blood and death, Aleppo reduced to rubble, was difficult to witness, even on screen in the safety of a darkened room.

All that carnage and massacre. Grown-ups and children alike dying all over the place. It’s so wrong, totally unnecessary, freaking useless. Just to maintain someone(s)’s illusion of power. Delusion.

I watched the whole thing rather numbly. I heard people wincing around me in the theatre every now and then, but I felt dead inside. Here was just another example of human evil and stupidity, albeit in real life. An alternative emotion was anger, I suppose.

For Sama was created from the filmmaker’s courage, rage, persistence, and gives voice to 5 years of the uprising in Syria. Give this documentary a watch if you have the chance to. Heck, watch it online here or there or elsewhere.