The character arc of Waad Al-Kateab
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Her surname is a pseudonym, used to protect her family, and her birth year is published only as about 1991. Between her arrival in Aleppo and now sit a marketing degree begun at eighteen in 2009, the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011 and the decision to pick up a camera, five years of filming her own life in that city, reports carried on Channel 4 News in Britain, a friend who became her husband and who is a doctor, a daughter called Sama born in 2015, a departure from Aleppo in December 2016, an International Emmy in 2017 as the first Syrian to win one, and a documentary that took the best documentary prize at Cannes and a BAFTA. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Drag along the line to move, pinch or use the buttons to look closer. Tap the line to pluck it, or any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Waad Al-Kateab?
She arrived to study marketing. She left with five years of footage.
She moved to Aleppo in 2009, at eighteen, to study marketing at the university there. That is the whole of the plan she arrived with. In 2011 the Syrian Civil War broke out and she began her work as a citizen journalist, filming what was happening around her with no training in it and no commission for it. Her reports were picked up and broadcast by Channel 4 News in the United Kingdom, where the coverage became the most watched programme on the British news channels.
She chose to stay. Over five years in Aleppo she kept filming her own life as well as the city's: a friend, Hamza, a doctor, who became her husband, and their first daughter, Sama, whose name means sky, born in 2015. Filming a war is one thing. Filming your own marriage and your own newborn inside one, and keeping the camera running, is a different decision, and she made it every day for five years.
She and her family left Aleppo in December 2016, and she, Hamza and their two daughters have lived in the United Kingdom since. The awards for the reporting started arriving almost immediately: the Amnesty International awards and the British Journalism Awards that same December, three prizes from the Royal Television Society in March 2017, and in October 2017 an International Emmy in the news category for her coverage of the siege, which made her the first Syrian to win one.
The footage became For Sama, directed with Edward Watts, a film addressed to her daughter. It won the Prix L'Oeil d'or for best documentary at Cannes in 2019 and received a six minute standing ovation. It took four British Independent Film Awards that year, the Best European Documentary at the European Film Awards, and the Special Jury Prize at South by Southwest.
At the British Academy Film Awards it became the most nominated documentary in the history of those awards, with four nominations, and won Best Documentary. It was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards. She was named in Time's hundred most influential people in 2020 and on the BBC's hundred women list in November of that year, and in 2021 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made her the recipient of its Gold Fellowship for Women. The film has collected more than a hundred awards.
The moments
Waad Al-Kateab's timeline.
The 2000s
She moves to Aleppo at eighteen
Milestone, and it changed her direction. A marketing degree, in a city she had chosen for the university.
The 2010s
She picks up a camera
Milestone, and it changed everything. No training, no commission, and the only camera in the room.
Leave the city, or film it
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: stay and film, taken, or leave with the degree. The footage became For Sama, which won at Cannes, took a BAFTA, and was nominated for an Academy Award.
She elects to stay
Milestone, and it changed everything. Everybody who could leave was leaving. She stayed and kept filming.
Sama is born
Milestone, and it changed everything. A first child, born in the middle of all of it.
They leave Aleppo
Setback, and it changed everything. Out of the city, with five years of footage and two small children.
The first prizes arrive
Milestone. Three awards in one month, for work nobody had commissioned.
Three from the RTS
Milestone, and it changed her direction. The camera operator award, for someone who taught herself.
The first Syrian to win one
Milestone, and it changed everything. An Emmy, and nobody from her country had ever held one.
For Sama at Cannes
Milestone, and it changed everything. Five years of footage, cut into a film, and the room stood up.
Four British awards
Milestone, and it changed her direction. A season where it won nearly everything it was entered for.
The 2020s
A BAFTA and an Oscar nomination
Milestone, and it changed everything. The most nominated documentary those awards had ever had.
Named on two lists
Milestone, and it changed her direction. A citizen journalist from Aleppo, on the lists of the year.
An Academy fellowship
Milestone, and it changed her direction. The Academy, formally, backing what she does next.
A film addressed to a child who was too young to remember any of it now exists so that she can. What she set moving is a record made by somebody who was living inside the thing she was filming, and the proof that the person best placed to tell a story is often the one who never trained to tell it.
Your turn
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Hers turns on one decision made in a city she had only gone to for a degree. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about five minutes.
Waad Al-Kateab: frequently asked questions
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Where does this timeline of Waad Al-Kateab's life come from?
More character arcs
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Sources
- Waad Al-Kateab, English Wikipedia biography.
- Award records for the International Emmy in October 2017, the Prix L'Oeil d'or at Cannes in 2019, the British Academy Film Awards in 2020 and the Academy Award nomination.
- Channel 4 News broadcast records for her reporting from Aleppo.
- Her surname is a pseudonym used to protect her family, and her birth year is published only as about 1991, so no birth date is shown on this page.
- The parties to the war she filmed are not named and no position on it is taken here, under the rule that a Character page carries no politics.