He deserves to be remembered, and I cannot let him go.
In the years since armed men took her father from a Damascus apartment in 2013, Wafa Mustafa has transformed private grief into public witness — one voice among the families of more than 177,000 Syrians swallowed by enforced disappearance. Her new documentary, 'Maybe Tomorrow,' co-directed with filmmaker Waad Al-Kateab, insists that to be forgotten is a second erasure, and that justice begins with proof of existence. It is a film born from what Mustafa calls 'the violence of waiting' — the particular cruelty of a grief that cannot complete itself because no truth has been allowed to arrive.
- Over 177,000 Syrians have been forcibly disappeared since 2011, most passing through torture and death inside a state apparatus designed to make people vanish without trace.
- Wafa Mustafa has spent six years carrying the unresolved disappearance of her father Ali — speaking at the UN, standing outside war crimes trials in Germany, and filming herself to resist the erasure of memory.
- Her documentary 'Maybe Tomorrow,' premiering at Sheffield DocFest, is both a personal reckoning and a political demand — structured so that Mustafa owns her story as co-director, not merely its subject.
- Enforced disappearances have continued under Syria's new leadership, meaning the machinery of erasure has outlasted the regime that built it, and the fight for accountability is far from over.
- Mustafa now warns that the most urgent battle is not only for justice but for proof — that the disappeared existed at all — as authorities have worked systematically to erase the crimes themselves.
Wafa Mustafa was twenty-three when armed men came to a Damascus apartment and took her father, Ali. She has not seen him since. She does not know whether he is alive or dead — only that he disappeared into a system that has swallowed more than 177,000 Syrians since 2011, most of them detained arbitrarily, tortured, and killed.
For six years, Mustafa has refused to let that void be final. She has addressed the United Nations, stood outside a war crimes courtroom in Koblenz, and built a global following through years of relentless activism. Now, eighteen months after the fall of Assad's regime, she has made a documentary with her childhood friend Waad Al-Kateab — the filmmaker behind the Bafta-winning 'For Sama.' The film is called 'Maybe Tomorrow,' drawn from an Umm Kulthum song her father once asked her to transcribe as a child: a song about waiting for someone gone, about love held in suspension.
Al-Kateab insisted Mustafa be not just the subject but co-director — an act of recognition that Mustafa frames as 'the power of what we can do when we own our stories.' The film follows her in Berlin, where she now lives, and back in Syria after Assad's fall, searching for any trace of what happened to her father. Her mother appears in it, recalling Ali's instruction to his daughters: write things down, document everything. The act of recording, Mustafa has found, is itself a form of resistance against erasure.
What she documents, she calls 'the violence of waiting' — the toll exacted on families scattered across countries, unable to grieve what they cannot confirm. She is clear that the work is unfinished: enforced disappearances have continued under Syria's new leadership, and the crimes did not end with Assad's flight. 'The fight today,' she says, 'is not just for the truth or accountability, but also to prove that they existed.' She does not want other young women to inherit what she has inherited — the guilt of survival, the weight of witness, the responsibility of memory.
'My father was the first comrade I had,' she said. 'Even if Ali Mustafa was not my father, I would have done everything I've done for him, because he is worth it.' The film is her answer to that imperative — a refusal to let waiting become forgetting, and a demand that the disappeared be named until the world can no longer look away.
Wafa Mustafa was twenty-three years old when armed men came to a Damascus apartment in 2013 and took her father. His name was Ali. She has not seen him since. She does not know if he is alive or dead, only that he vanished into the machinery of a state that has made disappearance its instrument.
More than 177,000 people have been forcibly disappeared in Syria since 2011, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. Most were detained arbitrarily, moved through notorious prisons, tortured, often killed. The conflict fractured a nation of roughly 25 million. Mustafa's father was one of countless names absorbed into that void.
But Mustafa has refused to let the void be final. For six years, she has campaigned for international attention to Syria's disappeared. She has spoken at United Nations meetings. She has stood alone outside a courtroom in Koblenz, Germany, where two former Syrian intelligence officers faced trial for state-sponsored torture. Now, eighteen months after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, she has made a documentary film with her childhood friend, filmmaker Waad Al-Kateab, who co-directed the Bafta-winning "For Sama." The new film is called "Maybe Tomorrow," a reference to an Umm Kulthum song her father once asked her to transcribe as a child—"Will I meet you tomorrow?"—a song about waiting for someone gone, about love suspended in time.
Mustafa calls what she documents "the violence of waiting." The film, premiering at Sheffield DocFest, follows her first in Berlin, where she now lives, then back in Syria after Assad's fall, searching for any trace of what happened to her father. It is, by design, intimate and collaborative. Al-Kateab insisted that Mustafa be not just the subject but the co-director, recognizing what she calls "the power of what we can do when we own our stories." Mustafa, who has built a substantial social media following over years of activism, frames the film as a compressed memoir of her daily life—six years of living with a disappearance, of the toll it exacts on families scattered across countries, unable to grieve what they cannot confirm.
The documentary also grapples with memory itself. Mustafa's mother appears in the film recalling her husband's instruction to their daughters: write things down, document things. And so Mustafa has, often filming herself, sometimes with another cinematographer when Al-Kateab could not be present. The act of recording becomes an act of resistance against erasure.
"The fight today is not just for the truth, accountability or even fighting for your loved ones to be alive, but also to prove that they existed," Mustafa says. This distinction matters. In Syria, authorities have attempted to erase the crimes themselves—the torture, the killings, the systematic disappearances. Few mechanisms exist to establish what actually happened. Amnesty International notes that while men are the majority of enforced disappearance victims globally, women most often lead the search for answers, carrying the burden of investigation and remembrance.
Mustafa is clear that the work is not finished. Enforced disappearances have continued under Syria's new leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa. Massacres persist. The crimes did not end with Assad's flight. She does not want other young women in Syria to inherit what she has inherited—the weight of trying to save a father from authorities, the guilt of survival, the responsibility of witness.
Speaking about her father remains difficult for her. But her love moves through her actions. "My father was the first comrade I had," she said. "Even if Ali Mustafa was not my father, I would have definitely done everything I've done for him, because he is worth it. He deserves to be remembered." The film is her answer to that imperative—a refusal to let waiting become forgetting, a demand that the disappeared be counted, named, and held in the world's attention until the world can no longer look away.
Citas Notables
The fight today is not just for the truth, accountability or even fighting for your loved ones to be alive, but also to prove that they existed.— Wafa Mustafa
Hope is a very, very dangerous thing. This film is, at the end of the day, a tool.— Waad Al-Kateab
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does Mustafa insist that proving her father existed matters as much as finding out what happened to him?
Because in Syria, the state didn't just make people vanish—it tried to erase the fact that they were ever there at all. If you can't prove someone existed, you can't prove a crime was committed. You can't demand justice for a ghost.
The song title—"Will I meet you tomorrow?"—feels almost prophetic in her life. Did she choose it knowing what was coming?
She didn't know, but she says it feels like she did. That's the strange weight of looking back at your own life after loss. The song becomes a mirror. Her father asked her to write down the lyrics to teach her to appreciate music. Instead, she ended up documenting her entire life through that frame—waiting, absence, love for someone gone.
What does "the violence of waiting" actually mean? It sounds poetic, but what is the violence?
It's the daily toll of not knowing. It's your body holding space for someone who might be dead but you can't accept it because there's nothing to accept—no body, no confirmation, no closure. It's the guilt of living your life while theirs is suspended. It's watching other families get answers while yours gets silence.
Why did Al-Kateab insist that Mustafa co-direct rather than just be the subject?
Because there's a difference between having your story told about you and telling your own story. When you own the narrative, you control what gets emphasized, what gets hidden, what gets remembered. Al-Kateab saw that Mustafa needed that authority back—especially after having her father taken from her.
Does the film offer any hope that her father might still be alive?
Al-Kateab was careful to say the film doesn't promise happy endings. Hope, she said, is dangerous. The film is a tool—for Mustafa, the impact it has is the goal. It's not about finding her father alive. It's about making sure the world knows he existed and that what happened to him cannot be normalized.
What does it mean that disappearances are continuing under the new Syrian government?
It means the machinery didn't break when Assad fell. The structures that made disappearance possible are still there. Mustafa's fight isn't over. In some ways, it's just beginning again.