The Producers

Executive Director-Producer – Arwa Damon
Arwa is a former Senior CNN Correspondent with a reputation for being able to draw out nuanced human stories in the midst of war and other crises. Among her multiple awards is an Emmy for the documentary Return to Mosul. She has reported throughout the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and Africa.  After witnessing injured children in war zones fall through the gaps in access to medical care, she co-founded the charity INARA in 2015. Through organizing the Kilimanjaro summit for INARA she recognized that it was a unique opportunity to present the incredible stories of war survivors to a diverse audience. Arwa’s belief in the power of this documentary led her to take the risk of leaving CNN and pursuing this project. It has long been her passion and longing to delve into the film world and translate her vast 17-year storytelling experience into something that would bring global issues to an audience in an unexpected way.

Co-Director – Binnur Karaevli
Binnur has written and directed award winning documentaries and short narrative films including The Eye of Istanbul, Voices Unveiled, Searching for Paradise, Evelyn of the Desertand Dance of The Whirling Dervish.  She is the Executive Producer/Creator of The Protector, the first Turkish Netflix International Originals series. Binnur was a writer for the upcoming Paramount + crime drama series The Turkish Detective. She directed the feature documentary, Seize the Summit with Arwa Damon. Her first novel Miras (Legacy) was published in Turkey in June 2022. She earned her BFA in Drama from Carnegie-Mellon University and MFA in Film Production from USC.

Making The Film

I’ve spent twenty years in journalism, most of that time spend in warzones, and most of that time wishing that I could just transport the audience into a specific moment. Often those moments had nothing to do with bullets and bombs. They were moments when I laughed with complete strangers over the absurdity of a situation, moments when a teenager went on and on about something on tiktok I had never heard about, moments under siege another woman and I spoke about why I wasn’t married and how she was jealous, moments that were simply just so “human”.

Our CNN documentary, that won an Emmy, gave me the space to show more of those moments that are just simply “human”. The space to be able to show the kindness, compassion, and love of a people whose story is often told through the lens of never-ending violence.

I founded my charity INARA in 2015, to be able to have a mechanism to provide medical and mental health treatment to children who survived war and disaster who were not able to reach it through other organizations. In 2022 as I was organizing the Kilimanjaro summit for INARA, I just saw this documentary. I saw the story, I saw the adventure, the lessons of the mountain for the climbers and the audience, I saw the moments that I knew I would crave to bring to a bigger audience.

I had to do it. I had to make this documentary happen to experiment with a blend of the “traditional documentary” and “reality tv.” I just had a gut feeling that it would be a unique way, given the adventure backdrop of getting this to a younger audience and give them the space to learn about their peers who survived war, and also to get it in front of a more adult audience who may not be interested in war and refugees. This documentary would inspire, educate, break barriers and preconceptions.

I left CNN to do this. I did not know and still don’t know if I’ve managed to pull it off. But I’ve always been more afraid of living with a “if only I had tried” then trying something and failing.

–Arwa Damon, Director