{"id":667605,"date":"2026-07-01T08:33:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T08:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/667605\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T08:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T08:33:09","slug":"get-away-from-there-run-the-stunning-film-about-love-blossoming-amid-the-carnage-of-aleppo-documentary-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/667605\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Get away from there \u2013 run!\u2019 The stunning film about love blossoming amid the carnage of Aleppo | Documentary films"},"content":{"rendered":"

The air is thick with smoke and dust, the ground littered with the twisted remains of burning vehicles. Children scream and sirens blare as activist and videographer Abd Alkader Habak rushes to help the injured after the bombing of an evacuee convoy in Aleppo<\/a> at the height of Syria\u2019s civil war in 2017. A voice note bubble pops up on Habak\u2019s phone screen. \u201cMy bird are you OK?\u201d says BBC journalist Janay Boulos. \u201cGet away from there, run.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more than a year, Habak and Boulos have been working to document Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad<\/a>\u2019s atrocities against his own people, their connection deepening all the time despite the physical distance. But this exchange represents the moment the pair\u2019s relationship shifts from colleagues to something more. \u201cI don\u2019t want footage,\u201d Boulos says, fear clearly detectable in her voice as she tries to follow things from her desk in London. \u201cI don\u2019t want anything, just please take care. I am here whenever you want to talk.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markIt was unbelievable that this person would come out to see me \u2013 a man from a war zone with nothing to offer<\/p>\n

Birds of War, out this week in the UK, is the remarkable story of how Lebanese journalist Boulos and Syrian activist Habak found each other against a backdrop of revolution, war and hostile borders, told using 13 years\u2019 worth of archive footage and the couple\u2019s voice notes, selfies, video calls and text messages.<\/p>\n

\u201cOriginally I wanted to make a documentary about Lebanon and the war and everything that is happening there now,\u201d says Boulos, who, along with Habak, directed the film. \u201cBut the more we thought about it, taking in a lot of very complicated history and politics and current events, to make it understandable, we should tell the story how we saw it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Smartphones and the internet have made first-person war narratives a 21st-century documentary staple. There have been lots<\/a> of very<\/a> good<\/a> documentary works from the siege of Aleppo, and about the conflict in Syria and its repercussions.<\/p>\n

But crucially, despite its title, Birds of War isn\u2019t just about war: it is more broadly a portrait of what it means to be Syrian or Lebanese at this precarious time for the Middle East. It is about what it means to belong \u2013 to each other, to a cause, to an ethnic group, to a city, to a nation \u2013 and the hopes and fears that accompany these bonds.<\/p>\n

Watching Habak and Boulos\u2019s love blossom, and the couple overcome huge odds to be together, is deeply moving. The film won the special jury award for journalistic impact on its premiere at Sundance, also picking up prizes at the Thessaloniki, Seattle and Visions du R\u00e9el film festivals.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the convoy bombing, with the aid of smugglers, Habak managed to make the dangerous journey out of Syria, across the Turkish border. Boulos flew to visit him and within a few months they decided to get married \u2013 something Boulos kept from her disapproving parents until the film premiered earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u2018She talks to me like she sees me. Not as news, not as a story\u2019 \u2026 Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak in Birds of War. Photograph: Abd Alkader Habak\/Habak Films<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was unbelievable for me,\u201d says Habak. \u201cThat this person would come from London to see me, a man from a war zone with nothing to offer.\u201d He had left Syria with nothing but his camera, some hard drives and the clothes on his back. The film-maker, who now lives with Boulos in London, originally planned to go back. \u201cI don\u2019t know who I\u2019ll be, without Aleppo to fight for,\u201d he tells her at the time.<\/p>\n

Going to meet Habak in Turkey was a \u201cno-brainer\u201d, Boulos says. \u201cIt was harmless chatting online \u2013 but it shifted to something real. I really cared about him and his safety and felt a lot of guilt. I thought, \u2018I am here in London. These people are on the ground risking their lives so I can report the news.\u2019 I spent a lot of nights when he had no internet thinking, \u2018Where is he? Is he fine?\u2019 We had started to chat for longer and I realised I really cared for this man when we met in Turkey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Birds of War captures this disconcerting element of modern conflict journalism very well. In their first ever exchange of messages, Habak asks Boulos: \u201cWho are you?\u201d In the beginning, he only has her word that she is from the BBC. Meanwhile Boulos, on the hunt for footage from the city, has been passed his number second- or even third-hand. Trust and familiarity grow as the weeks and months go by.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe talks to me like she sees me. Not as news, not as a story,\u201d Habak muses on screen. Another time, Boulos leaves a voice note: \u201cYou are more than a story to me.\u201d The pair begin to use pet names \u2013 bird, my bird, little bird \u2013 creatures that, unlike our protagonists, can leave frontlines and militarised borders far behind.<\/p>\n

Like Boulos, I also covered the siege of Aleppo from afar. Every day, I would check the shifting frontlines and where bombs had dropped via real-time maps<\/a>, exchanging messages and voice notes with civilians and activists, getting to know a place and its people intimately, but through a screen. The documentary is the best depiction I\u2019ve come across of the powerlessness and guilt that those of us on the other end of a shaky internet connection feel while friends and loved ones in besieged and blockaded places go through hell.<\/p>\n

double quotation markYou want to go back. You want to help<\/p>\n

Shortly after Habak joined her in London, Boulos quit the BBC and the pair set up Habak Films, an independent production company focused on telling stories from Lebanon, Syria and the wider region. \u201cIt is a struggle when people back home are being killed daily,\u201d Boulos says, referring to the Israel-Hezbollah war. \u201cYou want to go back, you want to help, but you realise there\u2019s not enough help you could give in the world. It made me see what my role is. I have the privilege of [being in] London, so let\u2019s be this company that bridges the local voices in Lebanon and Syria to western audiences and news organisations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Birds of War is careful not to show too much of the violence and suffering Habak witnessed in Syria, and that the pair have documented since in Lebanon. The film-makers deliberately chose not to feature anything too graphic, or to amplify the sounds of explosions or bombing. The editorial process was helped by input from psychotherapist Rebecca Day, who has a background in documentary work.<\/p>\n

Left with nothing but his camera, his hard drives and the clothes on his back \u2026 Habak in 2016. Photograph: Milad Al Shihabi\/ Habak Films<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a long time, I didn\u2019t want to look at my hard drives from Syria,\u201d says Habak who, with Day, came up with they call the \u201ctraffic light system\u201d. As Habak spent weeks looking through his material, he labelled it green for footage there would be no problem using, orange for footage that could be distressing, and red for graphic material that didn\u2019t need to be included. \u201cMaking this film has been healing,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Footage of doctors struggling to deal with the influx of injured after bombings in Aleppo is interspersed with a man tending to his roof garden, or friends joking around in their flat. The bleakness of Syria\u2019s dusty, forlorn countryside contrasts with the sparkling blue Mediterranean when Boulos and Habak meet in Turkey and go paragliding \u2013 like birds.<\/p>\n

double quotation markHow long can we keep doing this?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talk a lot about the responsibilities film-makers have towards their sources and characters,\u201d says Day, \u201cbut it\u2019s also important to keep in mind the film-maker\u2019s perspective: what are your needs as a film-maker and as a person? It\u2019s now normal for productions to employ intimacy coordinators. I\u2019d like it to be industry standard for there to be some sort of reflective practice for dealing with traumatic material. It can be a huge burden for film-makers, but they don\u2019t have to carry that all alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film ends shortly after Habak is unexpectedly able to return home for the first time in years, after the Syrian opposition finally drives Assad from power in a surprise offensive at the end of 2024. But, for all this, the future for Syria and Lebanon remains uncertain. And as Birds of War makes clear, living with uncertainty is a fact of life for people in the film-makers\u2019 homelands, faced with seemingly endless cycles of unrest and violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow long can we keep doing this?\u201d Boulos asks Habak in one message from Beirut. \u201cJust until the wars finish,\u201d he replies.<\/p>\n

Birds of War is in UK cinemas from 3 July<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The air is thick with smoke and dust, the ground littered with the twisted remains of burning vehicles.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-667605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}