Lebanese musician and composer Firas Abou Fakher joins the list of recipients at the 2024 BAFTA TV Awards. Held to honor the most notable contributions to the silver screen industry, both British and international, over the past year, the prestigious ceremony conferred its coveted prize in the Current Affairs category to the former Mashrou Leila band member for his work on The Shamima Begum Story.
As part of BBC Two’s The World series, the documentary tells the controversial true story of Shamima Begum, a British teenager who travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State’s ranks in 2015. Aged 15 at the time of the infamous events, she remained the center of public attention for years after her departure, from her marriage to an ISIS fighter, the births and subsequent deaths of her three children, to her expressed desire to return to the United Kingdom.
After her English citizenship was revoked in 2019, her legal status and possible return sparked heated debates in her home country by managing to split its civil society into two distinct and opposed camps: those supporting her return given her age at the time and those vehemently opposed to it under any circumstances.
Directed by investigative journalist Joshua Baker and produced by Sara Obeidat, the documentary allegedly took over eight years to make, according to an Instagram caption posted on Abou Fakher’s official account. Celebrated for his work on the film’s soundtrack, the Levantine artist told Emirati daily newspaper The National how challenging of a process it was all while revealing some behind-the-scenes moments.
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“Josh and the team had done a good job of making sure that the viewer was the one making decisions and dictating their position. I thought any music would only add my own feelings about Shamima into the mix. We talked about that a lot and my challenge in the studio was to extend that ambiguity,” he said.
Describing how it felt being one of the latest BAFTA laureates, he explained feeling “a bit stunned” as “he received (his) visa on Thursday, got to London Saturday evening, then met the entire team that (he) worked with for months for the first time at the Baftas. To walk away with an award is incredible. It came as an absolute shock to (him) and to the entire team.”
Amidst the flood of congratulatory messages he has received over the past few hours following his win, Abou Khater took the opportunity to urge audiences to remember Begum, emphasizing how “she still remains in a camp in Syria, unable to return home to the UK.”
