– Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak’s documentary is a first-person account of their collaborative journalism amidst the Syrian Civil War and their subsequent romance
Directors and spouses Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak have a unique meet-cute story: as the latter submitted civilian footage of the 2016 Aleppo siege to the former’s BBC News coverage, an instant message-driven bond grew, and they became a couple upon meeting in person. Titled after their nicknames for one another, their co-directed documentary Birds of War engagingly depicts the relationship over a decade, initially through their contrasting lives in civil war-torn Syria and placid West London, and then their uncertain co-habitation afterwards. The film showed at Sheffield Doc/Fest last week, following the awards it garnered when it premiered at Sundance, and also at Thessaloniki and Visions du Réel. What’s more, in Sheffield, it scooped a Special Mention for the Tim Hetherington Award (see the news).
That we have any visual testimony from the war in Syria largely emanates from the heroic work of civilian journalists and videographers; this footage has also been the basis for many recent documentaries, most notably the Academy Award-nominated For Sama in 2019, though interest from festivals and audiences has quelled as successive conflicts have come to global attention. Birds of War doesn’t provide novel insight into the events and tactics of the war, which finally ended in 2024 after the regime fell to the Syrian opposition, and Habak’s cinematography largely mimics the horrifying and visceral imagery already widely circulated. Yet by focusing on two singular perspectives on the conflict and its aftermath, the film puts us in its raw emotional grip.
Deriving from a Lebanese Christian family resident in Jbeil, which her parents left temporarily during the country’s own civil war, Boulos felt an ardour for journalism (and a discomfort with the national press’s ongoing censorship by the government) that eventually led her to London and BBC Arabic’s comprehensive coverage. Grateful for the scope and international focus of her work (like any good journalist), she finds herself relying on Habak’s dispatches on the ground in Aleppo. His pin-sharp videography offers a chilling glimpse of the constant aerial raids from the Syrian regime and Russia, alongside more uplifting stories, such as the creation of a precious garden nursery atop a ruined building. Surely, the BBC must’ve given Habak ample financial reward, as their mutual search for footage means they are each a constant fixture in the other’s phone notifications. Their exchanges – which we see in blue and white split-screen message bubbles – testify to the unlikely rapport that can build in such virtual settings.
In a welcome show of self-awareness as the film reaches its second half, we feel Boulos and Habak resigning themselves to how war has given their lives meaning. A cutting sense of displacement grows, as Boulos laments being so invested in a region she’s physically forsaken; when Habak eventually emigrates to London via Turkey, we feel the shock of him having to fully rebuild his identity, with the cause he’s dedicated his adult life to carrying on, without him, a continent away. With the film’s timeline concluding in the present, amidst Israel’s bombing campaigns in Lebanon and Syria, the directors give us what few accounts of the Syrian Civil War have been able to show: its legacy in a wider context of regional instability and the aftershocks on those both brave, and unlucky, enough to confront it.
Birds of War is a co-production by the UK, Syria and Lebanon, staged by Habak Films and Sonja Henrici Creates. Its international sales are handled by Dogwoof.
