Producer Charly Wai Feldman explains the challenging production of documentary film, Killing Anna, the story of the undercover investigation into a brutal massacre of civilians by Syrian soldiers.
The Film is premiering at Sheffield DocFest today (Friday 12th June) and will be in select UK cinemas from 19 June 2026 and will also be broadcast on Channel 4 at a later date.
A Syrian academic in Amsterdam receives shocking footage of civilians killed by an unknown army officer. She traces the perpetrator and poses as “Anna” to friend him on Facebook, drawing him into a series of bone-chilling calls. Built from covert digital surveillance and undercover recordings, Killing Anna tells the story of their extraordinary and dangerous relationship as she confronts one of the world’s most brutal regimes. This is a gripping psychological thriller about one person’s determination to expose the truth, no matter the personal cost.
As we were waved across the border by Syrian soldiers on our way to Damascus it was a pinch me moment. For the previous three years of making our film about an undercover investigation into a regime war crime, a trip like this had been completely unthinkable. But in a whirlwind of change, the Assads had fallen and we could now go and film in the country that had been under their grip for decades.
That journey – unplanned and unimaginable at the outset – is perhaps the best illustration of what long-form creative documentary filmmaking can do that almost nothing else can.
The project began when my colleague Matt Cole and Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins met Syrian academic Annsar Shahhoud in 2022, following The Guardian‘s coverage of her extraordinary story. Annsar and Professor of Genocide Studies Uğur Üngor had received shocking footage documenting a massacre of civilians carried out by an unknown Syrian intelligence officer. To uncover the truth, Annsar used a pro-regime online persona called “Anna”. Through this alter-ego they tracked down the perpetrator, Amjad Youssef, established contact with him and, over time, obtained a confession to his crimes. The evidence gathered through Anna’s conversations with Amjad exposed the inner workings of one of the world’s most brutal regimes.
Annsar was clear about one thing: she did not want to be made a hero. She had lived in isolation for years. Several production teams had approached her. She and Uğur chose to work with Keo Films and Bellingcat because of our track record, collaborative approach, and emphasis on duty of care. We couldn’t have known then just how much that trust would have to be earned, tested, and renewed over the three years that followed.
There were considerable mental health and security considerations for participants and crew associated with a story of this nature, layers of which we continued to unpack over the years to come.
The subject of “Anna” was taboo at the start. That alter-ego was a source of deep psychological complexity for her. The film could not be made without understanding that, and understanding it meant moving slowly, carefully, and in genuine partnership with her therapist and with mental health partners. This wasn’t a box-ticking exercise. The duty of care wasn’t a production phase we moved through and left behind. It was the ongoing condition under which the film became possible at all. The ultimate creative reward came when director Sam Benstead pitched to her the idea to create a set symbolising her life as ‘Anna’, and film it burning down as a symbolic farewell to the persona. Her response was unforgettable. “Yes, let’s do it. So long as I can light the fire!” She now describes this as a milestone in putting Anna to rest and moving on with her life.
While this deeply personal process was unfolding, events in Syria were continuing to reshape the story itself. Assad fell. And headlines included the Tadamon massacre. Annsar and Uğur’s work had helped bring Tadamon and Amjad Youssef into the international spotlight at a pivotal moment in history.
The security considerations that had defined our Lo approach for two years hadn’t gone away, but shifted overnight and new risks emerged in their place: online abuse, reputational exposure, the long-term psychological weight of Annsar’s participation becoming public. Documentary making doesn’t end when filming ends. Neither do your responsibilities to the people in it.
We always thought of survivors and families of victims of the Tadamon massacre as the first audience of the film, and they were always at the heart of our participants motivations to tell this sensitive story. With Assad’s regime gone, we could finally envisage including their voices directly in the film.
What made the Damascus trip possible was a network of partners willing to engage seriously with the ethical and security dimensions of the project. They all recognised the ever-changing nature of the landscape we were in, and they all knew we had to go to Syria. And crucially, they supported us to make it happen. That included Channel 4’s commissioning editor, legal and high-risk teams, Keo Films’ executive producer Andrew Palmer and our financiers who all accepted uncertainty as part of the process, and organisations such as Bellingcat and Syrian grassroots networks.
This is not unique to Killing Anna. A sister project at Keo Films, the Sundance award-winning One in a Million, picked up where its series Exodus had left off, and followed one refugee family over the next ten years. Both projects rely on a shared commitment between all partners to embrace the unexpected and to ‘go with it’, trusting in the relationships built over time between filmmaker and participants. As any documentary maker will tell you, this is increasingly rare. A contracting industry, pressure for fast turnaround, and a tendency toward neatly packaged past-tense storytelling means fewer commissioners are willing to back a film whose shape can’t be predicted at the outset.
Funding films like this is a creative challenge of its own. But one part of this puzzle that doesn’t always get attention is that requirement for trust between filmmaker and subject. The depth of access, the willingness of a participant to go somewhere genuinely difficult on camera, the moment when a story reveals something that could not have been anticipated at the outset – none of that happens without trust. And trust is not a given. It is built through exactly the kind of careful, ongoing, adaptive responsibility that the industry sometimes treats as an obstacle to filmmaking rather than its engine.
With our UK premiere this week, we are still, in some ways, mid-process. Killing Anna’s afterlife will now be shaped by the audiences, and events still unfolding in Syria.
Produced by Matt Cole and Charly Wai Feldman, Line Producer Jade Miller-Robinson, executive produced by Andrew Palmer for KEO Films, a PASSION PICTURES company, the film was commissioned by Channel 4 and co-produced with Bellingcat, Placeholder Films and the Swartz Foundation. Executive producers include Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins, alongside Sacha Mirzoeff, Barbara Truyen, Jim and Susan Swartz, Harriet Gugenheim, Joseph Schull and Hassan Elmasry.
KILLING ANNA is premiering at Sheffield DocFest on Friday 12th June and in select UK cinemas from 19 June 2026 and will also be broadcast on Channel 4 at a later date
Jon Creamer
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