Two years ago, in the early hours of 6 February, an earthquake measuring 7.8 in magnitude struck southern Turkey and northern Syria. The epicentre was near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, where Waad al-Kateab’s family was living.
The Syrian filmmaker and activist woke up late that morning at her home in East London. She was in a hurry to take her two daughters to school, so she didn’t look at her phone until afterwards when she found thousands of messages waiting for her. She immediately called her family to check if they were alright. Thankfully, they were okay, but many others were not.
“It was really hard and terrifying. But it was very much like you need to do something, whether you are there or not,” Waad tells The New Arab, explaining that because of her refugee status at the time, she wasn’t allowed to travel to Turkey.
Instead, she and other Syrians worked together from London to help those affected.
As the scale of the destruction became clear, Waad’s instincts as a filmmaker kicked in — she knew she had to document what had happened.
“When we were watching the failure of the UN, the international community, the Turkish government, it was more reason to shout out and ask for help […] But also for us, it’s about saving the memories. It’s about not letting this just pass as if it’s a normal thing; it’s to call for justice,” Waad explains.
Like watching an apocalypse movie
The result is Waad’s third documentary, Death Without Mercy, which chronicles the devastation of the earthquake through the eyes of two Syrians — her friends, Fadi Al Halabi and Fuad Sayed Issa.
The film is distressing but vital, with people trapped under the rubble filming their last messages to their loved ones. Outside, people use their bare hands to comb through the ruins desperately trying to reach survivors as they yell for help.
More than 60,000 people were killed in the twin earthquakes — a second quake with a magnitude of 7.6 followed a few hours after the first — although many believe the real number of fatalities is likely to be much higher. It displaced millions, including many Syrians who had already been displaced by war.
Waad went through hundreds of hours of CCTV and first-person documentary footage from under and above the rubble, as well as a drone, news and archival footage.
The film captures the utter destruction of the earthquake; at first, grainy CCTV shows telegraph poles beginning to shake, and then the first building crumbles like a Jenga tower.
Clouds of dust chase people down the street. Whole neighbourhoods are razed to the ground and entire families killed. Bodies litter the streets, and survivors wander around barefoot, in disbelief.
At points, it feels like you are watching an apocalypse movie. But this, unfortunately, is real life.
Even before Waad had asked him, Fadi had already started filming the aftermath of the earthquake from his home in Idlib, northwest Syria.
“We are both filmmakers, so this is the very natural thing we are used to doing — it’s in our blood,” she says.
Both Fadi and Fuad race to find their families at the beginning of the film — both of which have been buried under the wreckage of their homes in Antakya, the capital of Hatay province in southernmost Turkey.
Border guards stop Fadi from going into Turkey, threatening to kill him if he doesn’t go away.
When he finally gets through, Fuad finds the city unrecognisable, and his family decimated. Sixteen members of his immediate family, including his parents and siblings, died in the earthquake.
‘I hugged what was left of him’
In a different part of the city, Fuad, a Syrian activist and the founder of the charity Violet, finally receives a voice message from his wife from under the rubble of their building, the Rönesans Rezidans (Renaissance Residence), which collapsed with around 1,000 people inside.
“Fuad, if you listen to this, I love you deeply,” Safa, Fuad’s wife, says to him.
Fortunately, Safa is rescued and taken to hospital along with their youngest son, Sami, but she doesn’t know where their other son, Koutaiba, is.
Fuad searches for him in the remains of their home, first finding one of Koutaiba’s t-shirts, then his toys, and finally his body — still wearing his school uniform.
He takes his son to a cemetery in Mersin and digs a grave with his hands.
“I hugged what was left of him,” he says, and then he buries him.
They visit his grave at the end of the film, along with Sami, who babbles while his parents cry.
“He was my best friend and son. I promised him that when he was older, I wouldn’t go anywhere without him,” says Fuad in the film.
He and his brother film key moments on their phones, planning to publish the videos on social media to ask for help after waiting for days without support from authorities or aid organisations.
“My main goal [for the film] is to make sure no other families have the same experience as us. I hope that we can push the government to support more local organisations and first responders to be able to respond to any crisis,” Fuad tells The New Arab.
A man-made disaster
The film is a window into unimaginable pain, and at times it is difficult to watch. Waad hopes it will create change.
“It is a man-made disaster and we should not let it go,” she says.
It is clear from the documentary that deaths could have been prevented if building regulations had been followed and the emergency response had been quicker.
Despite there being a major fault line — the East Anatolian Fault — running through south-eastern Turkey, many of the buildings in the affected areas were not earthquake-proof.
The city of Antakya was particularly vulnerable because residential buildings were built along the bank of the Orontes River, where the soil is sedimentary and unstable.
The film highlights the Turkish government zoning amnesty in 2018, where buildings previously built without proper authorisation were allowed to be registered, instead of being demolished.
“The administration is responsible,” says Turkish lawyer Ecevit Alkan during an interview in the film.
The UN was also to blame for their slow and insufficient response, particularly in the “prison” of northwest Syria, adds Waad.
Little accountability
Two years since then, there has been little accountability or justice for those who lost loved ones.
Private contractors in Turkey have been investigated for their part in the building failures, with some jailed — including the owner of the Rönesans Rezidans — but there has been a lack of accountability for public officials who permitted the contractors to build those unsafe buildings.
Last year, Human Rights Watch reported on the stonewalling of charges for officials responsible for the earthquake deaths, which it called “deeply troubling and unacceptable.”
And despite promises by the Turkish government, rebuilding the more than 54,000 buildings that were either destroyed or damaged has been slow.
Fuad has moved to Istanbul with his family, but he doesn’t feel safe there either. The city sits on the North Anatolian Fault, with experts predicting a major earthquake before 2030. That said, many of the buildings are also not earthquake-proof.
“It’s risky, but this is the only choice for us for now,” he says.
Despite the pain they have suffered, there is hope. Safa is pregnant with another son, and when they speak to The New Arab, they are visiting Damascus, in a Syria free of Bashar al-Assad, with the hope that one day they will live there permanently as a family.
Weighing in on post-Assad Syria, Waad shares how the fall of the brutal Assad regime in December still brings a smile to her face as she tells The New Arab how much hope it gave her.
“We were in a tunnel, and there was no light at all, but we were still walking because we couldn’t go back, and we couldn’t just stay where we were, and suddenly, we found a huge door being opened,” she says.
‘I feel it could have been me’
Waad is no stranger to difficult reporting. She also made the BAFTA-winning For Sama, documenting her life during the Syrian uprising and subsequent siege in Aleppo over five years.
Currently, Waad is organising for her parents to return home and, perhaps one day will also return. For now, she is focused on fighting for justice for the earthquake victims’ families.
“I feel it could have been me if I didn’t leave Turkey,” she says.
“So it definitely was one of the most difficult moments in my life [making this film], but at the end of the day, I have this responsibility as a filmmaker, and responsibility as a friend of both [Fadi and Fuad], and a responsibility for everyone who went through this as part of my community.”
Death Without Mercy will be officially released on the second anniversary of the earthquake — 6th February 2025 — on Paramount Plus in the US and around the world.
It will also be shown at three screenings in Syria, which Waad is especially excited about.
Jessie Williams is a freelance journalist, editor, and writer based in London. Her interest lies in global current affairs, humanitarian issues, women’s rights, migration, culture, and politics to explore the human stories behind the headlines
Follow her on X: @JessieWill5
