BIRDS OF WAR

In 2016, during the final months of the battle for Aleppo, BBC reporter Janay Boulos contacts Syrian cameraman and activist Abd Alkader Habak for footage from the ground. What begins as a professional exchange gradually develops into an intimate relationship, sustained across the distance between London and Syria through digital messages. Drawing on thirteen years of personal archives, “Birds of War” follows their lives as war, revolution and exile leave their mark on their love. The film incorporates the visual language of messaging into its storytelling, turning their correspondence into a cinematic space where private emotion and the ethics of documenting war continually intersect.