Recounting the raw human stories that show the world what life is like in Gaza right now during the Israeli invasion, From Ground Zero + is part of an essential project to give voice to Palestinians living in the midst of war.
Beginning with 22 very short films screened in the compilation From Ground Zero at Cannes last year, this invaluable series of eyewitness documentaries finds a natural continuation in the new anthology From Ground Zero +. Its international premiere at the Amman Int. Film Festival contained four shorts that gave the filmmakers more space to develop their true stories and characters, all emerging from the hellish cauldron of bombed-out Gaza.
It is clearly an ongoing project. At the Amman Film Festival, producers Rashid Masharawi and Laura Nikolov also screened the full-length The Clown of Gaza under the Ground Zero + banner (it is being reviewed separately by The Film Verdict.) It is important that the writer-directors are not professional foreign reporters but are Gazans who find themselves trapped in the middle of the conflict. Their insiders’ point of view changes everything.
Told from a very female perspective, Etimad Wishah’s Very Small Dreams is a deep dive into the nitty-gritty problems women are forced to deal with when they and their children become refugees. While in the first From Ground Zero Wishah’s short Taxi Wanissa remained an unfinished symbol of the way war interrupts lives and creative endeavors, her new film captures the extenuated frustrations and suffering endemic to women living in a war zone. With amazing candor, they talk to the camera about how the lack of hygiene in the tents where they live lead to rashes and painful ailments. A young woman who gave birth to her fourth child in the camp recounts to a medic how the lack of sanitary pads and diapers forces her to cut up strips of toweling for herself and the baby, who both suffer from bacteria-related infections because the towels are washed and rewashed without soap. Another woman, who never expected to live in a tent, has such a long list of illnesses and complaints she wishes she could die. And a third young woman refugee feels depressed by the lack of privacy in sharing a tent and sleeping with 8 to 15 strangers. This plain-speaking, down-to-earth documentary hits the viewer hard, emphasizing the psychological toll these women struggle with every day, with no end in sight.
With Hassan the film switches to a male p.o.v., in an anguishing and deeply revealing portrait of a 17-year-old boy who finds himself in the south of Gaza, separated from his parents and siblings. Directed and filmed with intense compassion by Muhammad Al Sharif, it follows the boy’s frightened journey through the bombed-out ruins of buildings in search of a safe place to sleep – a hospital, a school, a food kitchen, even the street. He is obsessed with a desire to rejoin his family up north (presumably in Gaza City), but each time he sets out on the road north, soldiers and bombs turn him back. Yet when a cease-fire is called, hopes are raised that there might still be a chance to go home. The final shots show Hassan grinning happily as he marches on a high road, epically silhouetted against the sky alongside many other hopeful travelers, as David Chivers’ moving score stirs up mixed emotions at this universal scene.
Emotional content is fore-fronted in Aws Al Banna’s The Wish. The 26-year-old filmmaker, who is a TV and stage actor as well as a playwright and drama teacher, uses his past experience with children’s theater to work with a group of teenage girls traumatized by the war. Encouraged to remember the cherished people and things they have lost, they break down sobbing during rehearsals as they bring to mind missing parents and siblings, homes reduced to rubble, even silky long hair that had to be cut for lack of soap and water. Meanwhile the filmmaker recalls the loss of the woman he loved and his own struggle for healing and wholeness.
Similarly, Reema Mahmoud’s Colors under the Sky spotlights a creative young woman whose determination to make her voice heard offers a way out of her terrible psychological burden of being homeless, orphaned, and a refugee. Amal is a painter and singer who says she was on the verge of a breakthrough after being invited to a big festival abroad in October 2023. Then war breaks out and Instead of revealing her talent to the world, she ended up alone in Rafah, singing songs of rebellion and painting murals on the wall.
These individual stories may be miniscule facets of the face of suffering in Gaza, but taken together they start to build into a much clearer picture than the stereotyped war reportage of the legacy media. The choice to lengthen the films is a good one, giving much more depth.
Producers: Laura Nikolov, Rashid Masharawi
Production companies: Masharawi Fund for Films and Filmmakers, Coorigines Production (France)
Venue: Amman International Film Festival (out of competition)
In Arabic
“Very Small Dreams” 99
20 min.
Director: Etimad Wishah
Cinematography:
Editing: Marion Boe
“Hassan” 88
30 minutes
Director, cinematography: Muhammad Al Sharif
Editing: Marion Boe
Music: David Chivers
“The Wish” 94
30 mins.
Director: Als Al Banna
Editing: Denis Le Paven
“Colors Under the Sky” 87
20 mins.
Director: Reema Mahmoud
Editing: Marion Boe
