Waad al-Kateab

Waad al-Kateab was a marketing student at the University of Aleppo when protests against the Assad regime swept the country in 2011. Like many hundreds of her fellow Syrians, she became a citizen journalist determined to document the horrors of the war. She stayed through the devastating siege — documenting the terrible loss of life and producing some of the most memorable images of the six-year conflict. Reports she made for Channel 4 News on the conflict became the most watched pieces on the UK news program. They received almost half a billion views online and won 24 awards — including the 2016 International Emmy for breaking news coverage. When she and her family were evacuated from Aleppo in December 2016? she managed to get all her footage out, and created the documentary For Sama (Mountainfilm 2019) to tell her own story.