It’s difficult to truly understand what it’s like to live through a war without physically being there for it. Videos, photographs, and written accounts can tell us plenty but not paint the whole picture, but it is still vital, especially in such a digital information age, to ensure that reporting and documenting does happen, both as a conflict is playing itself out and long after it’s finished. Birds of War features two determined people from different backgrounds with a shared interest in ensuring that the truth gets out there who realize along the way that they have much more in common that might merit spending their lives together.
Janay Boulos is a journalist from Lebanon who has relocated to the UK to work for the BBC. She makes contact with a cameraman in Syria, Abd Alkader Habak, charging him to find a story and film it, assuring him that he can in fact trust her. As they write back and forth to each other using the term of endearment “my bird,” they develop a very close relationship that goes far beyond the stories that Habak is risking his life to get and Boulos is fighting to get approved so that his efforts aren’t wasted and the world is able to see what’s really going in the middle of a devastating war with considerable tragic collateral damage.
This documentary credits Boulos and Habak as its directors and screenwriters, telling their own story as best they can remember and convey it. Their text messages appear on screen, popping up in small bubbles as they communicate in brief exchanges that often stress safety and care along with an update on assignment or progress completing it. Their lives are separate but united by a passion for what they do and for pushing to get the story out there even and especially when others may not be willing to see it through to the end.
There are many layers to this film and the dynamic that its protagonists form. The course of events in Lebanon and Syria is not the same even if they’re not nearly as divergent as they may seem, and Boulos chose to leave and has built a new life for herself in a Western country while maintaining strong family ties to her homeland. Habak very much still lives close to danger and seeks to take an active physical role in making things better, which includes getting photographed carrying an injured child and in turn finding himself a target that forces him to flee to safety.
It’s undeniably endearing to see how this relationship flourishes, an unconventional love story that began with a professional contact that, for all both parties knew, could have been mired in deception. Boulos had no idea what she was going to get and if she could rely on this source for accurate reporting, while Habak didn’t know whether what he sent would be transmitted to the world as he sent it or if it might put him in greater danger. This film is by no means the end of their story but instead a public declaration of their partnership to continue doing the work that drives them both and which they feel is so vital to share with the world.
This is a film that represents a deep longing for another existence without any illusion about how impossible that would be, barely stopping to imagine what it could be like for these two to have met under normal circumstances and not have their interactions defined by the conflicts that have shaped and continue to shape how they spend their time. As a film, it’s an engaging, affirming portrait of two people deeply committed to the truth and to others, an inspiration for what so many would surely want to do in similar situations but might lack the courage and resolve to fully execute.
Movie Rating: 8/10
Birds of War premieres in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.
