“Get away from there – run away!” The stunning film about the love that blossoms amidst the massacre of Aleppo | Documentaries

TThe air is full of smoke and dust, and the ground is littered with the remains of burned-out vehicles. Children scream and sirens sound as activist and videographer Abdelkader Habak rushes to help the wounded after an evacuated convoy was bombed in Aleppo at the height of the Syrian civil war in 2017. A voice note bubble appears on Habak’s phone screen. “Bird, are you okay?” BBC journalist Janai Boulos says: “Get away from there, run away.”

For more than a year, Habak and Paul have been documenting the atrocities committed by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad against his own people, and their relationship deepens all the time despite the physical distance. But this exchange marks the moment when the relationship between the pair of colleagues turns into something more. “I don’t want footage,” Boulos says, the fear evident in her voice as she tries to keep track of things from her office in London. “I don’t want anything, just take care of yourself. I’m here whenever you want to talk.”

Birds of War, which opens this week in the UK, is the remarkable story of how Lebanese journalist Boulos and Syrian activist Habaq met against the backdrop of revolution, war and a hostile border, told using archival footage dating back 13 years, audio notes, personal photographs, video calls and text messages of the couple.

“Originally, I wanted to make a documentary about Lebanon and the war and everything that is happening there now,” says Boulos, who directed the film with Habak. “But the more we think about it, taking into account a lot of history and politics and current events that are so complex, to make it understandable, we have to tell the story how we saw it.”

Smartphones and the Internet have made first-person war narratives a documentary staple of the 21st century. There has been a lot of very good documentary work about the siege of Aleppo, and about the conflict in Syria and its repercussions.

But more importantly, and despite its title, “War Birds” is not just about war, but more broadly a portrait of what it means to be Syrian or Lebanese at this perilous time for the Middle East. It is about what it means to belong—to each other, to a cause, to an ethnic group, to a city, to a nation—and the hopes and fears that accompany these connections.

Watching Habak and Paul’s love blossom, and the couple overcome great odds to stay together, is very moving. The film won a Special Jury Prize for Press Impact upon its premiere at Sundance, and also received awards at the Thessaloniki, Seattle, and Visions du Réel film festivals.

Shortly after the convoy was bombed, and with the help of smugglers, Habak was able to make the dangerous journey out of Syria, across the Turkish border. Boulos traveled to visit him, and within a few months they decided to get married, something Boulos kept hidden from her disapproving parents until the film premiered earlier this year.

“It was unbelievable to me,” Habaq says. “For this person to come from London to see me, a man from a war zone who has nothing to offer.” He left Syria with nothing but his camera, some hard drives and the clothes on his back. The director, who now lives with Paul in London, was originally planning to return. “I don’t know who I would be without Aleppo, which I’m fighting for,” he told her at the time.

Going to meet Habak in Türkiye was a “no-brainer,” Paul says. “It was a harmless online conversation – but it turned into something real. I really cared about him and his well-being and I felt a lot of guilt. I thought: ‘I’m here in London.’ “These people on the ground are risking their lives so I can break the news.” I spent a lot of nights when he didn’t have internet thinking, “Where is he?” Is he okay? We started chatting longer and I realized I really cared about this guy when we met in Türkiye.

Warbirds captures this troubling element of modern conflict journalism very well. In their first exchange of letters, Habak asks Paul: “Who are you?” At first, he only had her word that she was from the BBC. Meanwhile, Paul, searching for snapshots of the city, obtains his second or even third number. Trust and familiarity grow as the weeks and months pass.

“She talks to me as she sees me. Not as news, not as a story,” Habaq says on screen. Another time, Paul leaves a voice message: “You are more than just a story to me.” The pair begin using pet names—bird, birdie, little bird—creatures who, unlike our heroes, can leave the front lines and military frontiers behind.

Like Paul, I also covered the siege of Aleppo from afar. Every day, I checked shifting front lines and where bombs were falling on real-time maps, exchanging messages and voice notes with civilians and activists, getting to know the place and its people intimately, but through a screen. The documentary is the best depiction I’ve seen of the helplessness and guilt felt by those of us on the other end of a shaky internet connection as friends and loved ones go through besieged, besieged places of hell.

Shortly after Habak joined her in London, Boulos left the BBC and the duo established Habak Films, an independent production company focused on telling stories from Lebanon, Syria and the wider region. “It’s a conflict when people are killed at home every day,” says Boulos, referring to the war between Israel and Hezbollah. “You want to come back, you want to help, but you realize there’s not enough help you can give in the world. It made me see what my role is. I have the honor [being in] London, let us be that company that connects local voices in Lebanon and Syria to Western audiences and news organisations.

Warbirds is careful not to show too much of the violence and suffering that Habak witnessed in Syria, and that the duo has since documented in Lebanon. The filmmakers deliberately chose not to show anything too graphic, or to amplify the sounds of explosions or shelling. The editing process was aided by input from psychotherapist Rebecca Day, who has a background in documentary work.

“For a long time, I didn’t want to look at my hard drives from Syria,” says Habaq, who with Day devised the so-called “traffic light system.” As Habak spent weeks researching his material, he labeled it green for shots that wouldn’t be a problem using, orange for shots that could be painful, and red for graphic material that didn’t need to be included. “Making this film was healing,” he says.

Footage of doctors struggling to deal with the influx of wounded after bombing in Aleppo is interspersed with a man tending to his rooftop garden, or friends joking in their apartment. The gloom of the deserted, dusty Syrian countryside contrasts with the sparkling blue of the Mediterranean when Paul and Habek meet in Türkiye and go paragliding like birds.

“We talk a lot about filmmakers’ responsibilities to their sources and characters, but it’s also important to take into account the filmmaker’s perspective: What are your needs as a director and as a person? It’s normal now for production companies to hire intimacy coordinators,” Day says. “I would like there to be some kind of meditative practice for dealing with traumatic material. I would like this to be an industry standard for dealing with traumatic material. It can be a huge burden on filmmakers, but they don’t have to be.” Carry that alone.”

The film ends shortly after Habak is unexpectedly able to return home for the first time in years, after the Syrian opposition finally managed to oust Assad from power in a surprise attack at the end of 2024. But despite all this, the future of Syria and Lebanon remains uncertain. As Birds of War makes clear, living with uncertainty is a reality of life for people in the filmmakers’ homelands, who face endless cycles of unrest and violence.

“How long can we keep doing this?” Paul asks Habak in one letter from Beirut. He answers: “Only until the wars end.”