"The Oscar nomination will help throw more light onto the Syrian cause, and hopefully help push people to support us," said Ballour, who has been living in Turkey since Eastern Ghouta fell after a five-year siege in 2018.
"When I was at home I could help people, I was calmer despite all the difficulties, the bombardments, the hunger and the tragedies we were witnessing every day," she said. She was particularly marked by one 11-year-old boy, Abdel Rahmane, who was in school when his class was hit by a shell, wounding most of his classmates."He lost his two legs. When he woke from the anaesthetic, he asked, 'Where are my legs? Why have you amputated them?'"
"In 'The Cave' hospital there was no room left to put the corpses, we piled them up one on top of the other," she recalled.