"We refugees are often pushed into the role of heroes, villains or victims": Syrian documentary filmmaker Waad al-Kateab shows what comes after the escape

On one day in January five years ago, Kimia Alizadeh risked everything and lost so much. On Instagram, she wrote: "I am one of millions of oppressed women in Iran." For years, she repeated every sentence she was told. She felt she was being used. And she refused to be part of the hypocrisy, lies, and injustice any longer.

Alizadeh is a professional athlete and won bronze for her home country in 2016 in the martial art of taekwondo. It was the first time an Iranian woman had won a medal. The government celebrated her, holding her up as an example of a successful Iranian woman. But Alizadeh wasn't in it for the celebration. Three and a half years after her bronze medal victory, she fled to Germany. She went from being a symbol of Iranian national pride to being a traitor. And had to start over.

Alizadeh's New Beginning captures a woman on film who also stood up against a regime. Not against Iran, but against Syria. Waad al-Kateab is a documentary filmmaker. She was among the last to leave the city of Aleppo during the war in Syria. In an interview in Zurich, she says of Alizadeh's post: "It was as if I was reading my own thoughts and feelings."

Kateab has resisted for years. In her 2019 film "For Sama," she documented how she, her husband, and their friends ran a hospital during the war in Syria. They cared for the injured and wrapped the dead in cloths. Their daughter, Sama, was born shortly before the siege. The footage shows buildings collapsing, bombs exploding, people screaming, and children bleeding. But also laughing, joking, jumping in puddles, and hugging each other. Kateab says she was the last documentary filmmaker living in Syria at the time.

"I had a different perspective on things in Syria. Because the country is my home. But also because I'm a woman," she says. The film won 71 awards and was nominated for an Oscar.

Kateab's second film, "We Dare to Dream," is no longer about her own resistance, but rather about that of others. And the question of what comes next.

In "We Dare to Dream," Kateab tells the stories of five athletes who broke with their homeland and are competing for the refugee team at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Among them is Iranian taekwondo fighter Kimia Alizadeh. At some point, all of them had a moment when they said "no"—by standing up against the conditions in their homeland.

But Kateab also shows with the film that every story of a person forced to flee is different. "From the outside, we refugees are often forced into a role. We're the heroes. The villains. The victims. But we're simply human beings."

The film, released in 2023, was screened in Zurich at the end of March at a conference organized by the Circle of Young Humanitarians, an organization that brings young people and humanitarian organizations together. Kateab traveled from London, where she currently lives and works.

For the film, Kateab not only accompanied Kimia Alizadeh from Iran, but also visited a young taekwondo fighter from Syria who jogs along dusty railway tracks in a camp in Jordan. She also visited a runner from South Sudan who runs laps in a refugee camp in Kenya and has handed her toddler over to her sister so she can train.

Traveling to these places was difficult. Waad al-Kateab doesn't have a British passport. With refugee status, she often can't get a visa.

The film isn't just about the stories of the individuals, but also about the relationships between them and Waad al-Kateab. Kateab is tangible, and sometimes even audible, in every scene. The athletes' stories and Kateab's life intertwine, blurring the line between in front of and behind the camera.

Kateab often keeps the camera very close, even—or especially—when it hurts. Kimia Alizadeh sobs after losing the bronze medal match in 2020. She says she vomited for an hour after an Iranian representative whispered in her ear that she had betrayed her country.

Kateab says that at the beginning of her second film, she decided to take ten steps back. She wanted to tell the athletes' stories from a professional perspective. "I quickly realized I was failing." Instead, she comforted the team members, reassured them, and encouraged them. She felt like a friend, a sister, a mother.

When canoe athlete Saeid Fazloula was overcome by self-doubt and feared that he would not be taken seriously as a refugee, she told him: "None of these men have gone through what you have had to go through."

The images convey a closeness reminiscent of family vacation videos. They are sometimes shaky and spontaneous, resembling moving snapshots. Waad al-Kateab's style is direct. She took her first pictures in Aleppo with her cell phone, later with her digital camera. Her subjects are her friends, her husband, her young daughter, and herself. This is what makes the films so intimate and the horrors the people are drawn into so merciless.

In the film about the athletes, it becomes clear again and again: the members of the refugee team are the underdogs in the competition. They share passion and talent with the professional athletes of the national teams, their hopes and fears are similar. Yet they're starting from the very bottom.

Kimias Alizadeh's competitor from Great Britain was sponsored by an international sports brand and received government funding. As a member of the refugee team, Alizadeh received $1,500 a month. That had to be enough for herself and her coach.

The Refugee Olympic Team has existed since 2016. In that year, the International Olympic Committee established the Olympic Refugee Foundation, which provides 70 selected athletes with monthly training and living expenses.

The team gave the refugees visibility and a chance to pursue their dream under a different flag. And to stand up for the many people who are fleeing worldwide.

However, two former members of the refugee team who had trained in a camp in Kenya told Time magazine that they were not treated equally to the athletes on the national teams. They received neither prize money nor any serious prospects. They were made to feel that they should simply be happy to be there.

Kateab says the team members received little support when they were stuck in their stopover in Doha due to a coronavirus case. They had to stay for several days, had no equipment, and couldn't train. "I think the Refugee Team faced so many challenges that the Olympic Committee couldn't really address." But the fact that the team even exists is already an achievement.

For the members of the refugee team, one question is ever-present: What comes after the competitions? They want to become naturalized citizens, start a new life, and compete under a national flag again. Kimia Alizadeh now holds Bulgarian citizenship. At the Summer Olympics in Paris, she won the bronze medal for her new homeland.

The Olympic Games were launched in 1896 to unite nations and reduce distances. To focus not on the differences between people, but on the similarities.

Kateab does exactly that in her films. When she films the athletes being cheered on by their friends at home and joking with their coaches. When she films her husband singing to their daughter as bombs fall outside. When a friend gives his wife a persimmon he managed to find. And then paints a bombed-out bus with the children. That's when she captures the everydayness of life, the small moments between the horror you see on the news.

These are moments of humanity.