Birds of War review – war journalists find love among the ruins

This documentary tells the story of the long-distance relationship between a BBC correspondent in London and a photographer on the ground in Syria with charm and humanity

Politics is to some degree set aside here in favour of matters of the heart; this is a story of romantic love among the ruins. London-based Lebanese journalist Janay Boulos, while working for the BBC’s Arabic service, fell in love from afar in 2016 with Syrian activist and photojournalist Abd Alkader Habak. He, during the Assad regime, was putting his life in danger to supply her with dramatic footage from his home town of Idlib and later Aleppo. Habak was himself to make international headlines in 2017 by getting photographed carrying an injured child to safety.

Habak’s gruelling images are interspersed with Boulos’s smartphone footage of her thoughtfully going up and down in the lifts at BBC Broadcasting House as well as home-movie material of her childhood in the seaside Lebanese town of Byblos; we get their tender texts and voice notes showing a growing relationship, sweetly calling each other “bird” and “little bird”. Finally Habak got out of Syria and into Turkey; the couple got married and lived in London, going on pro-Palestinian marches. Habak has mixed feelings about having to watch Syria’s final liberation on TV and Boulos goes back to visit her parents in Lebanon where the activities of Israel are stoically deplored, though Hezbollah is not mentioned.

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