Among the many films about Palestine being screened at the Cairo Film Festival this year, Gazan Tales is surely one of the simplest and, ultimately, most touching. It was produced and directed by Mahmoud Nabil Ahmed on a shoestring budget, and its documentary strategy is classically observational. Nor do the four male protagonists go out of their way to make themselves particularly likable. Yet by delving into the daily routines of their ordinary pre-war lives, the filmmakers build up an unexpected portrait of Gaza and its residents that anchors the viewer’s empathy in a local culture rarely captured in fiction films.
Part of the film’s uniqueness comes from being made by a group of non-professionals taking part in a filmmaking workshop called From Gaza to the World. A different team follows each subject and their collective videos are beautifully interwoven by editor Yassine Tbessi into a lively collage of stories and activities that bring the viewer up close to people whose existences revolve around music teaching, horseback riding, listening to the sea or just squabbling with a wife.
At first glance, the documentary has many similarities to the more high-profile From Ground Zero, an anthology film collecting 22 short films shot in the Gaza Strip after the war began on Oct. 7 last year. Though both are collective projects focused on the local residents, Gazan Tales was shot almost entirely (apart from a coda) before Oct. 7. Though the filmmakers lived through more than a week of bombardments, they chose to recount lives of endurance and adapting, rather than to focus on the violence that has long been an inescapable part of life in Gaza. From this point of view, it is certainly the easier film for audiences to watch and relate to, though the ending is all the more poignant for having gotten to know intimate details about the four subjects, all memorable characters.
One of them is a bearded horse rider with a chip on his shoulder, or at least at attitude of litigious suspicion towards the young men who gravitate around him and his horses. Incredibly, he runs a stable and riding club right in the center of the city. His coterie of followers put up with his mood swings for the joy of riding horses around town, while the small boys in his family learn the ropes by washing the dogs.
Another unexpected resident is a grumpy musician who plays a stringed instrument resembling an oud. Sitting in a depressingly undecorated room with only a desk for furniture, he criticizes would-be singers, aspiring violin players and other students who darken his door.
A grandpa getting on in years has difficulty walking, but no problems criticizing his aged wife over anything she says or does. And yet there is a deep bond that links them. The fourth figure is a long-bearded fisherman who lives in a makeshift shack on the beach, where his poetic soul is caressed by the sound of the breaking waves.
It is only at the very end of the film that an off-screen narrator is heard giving an update, her words spilling out over shots of bombed-out buildings and streets blocked by fallen masonry, the dead in white body bags lined up in a row, distraught mourners whose haunted looks express a life reduced to rubble. After getting to know this quartet of amusing characters whose humanity is raw and palpable, this brief coda speaking of death and the violent end of a whole way of life is simply devastating.
Director, producer: Mahmoud Nabil Ahmed
Screenplay, cinematography: From Gaza to the World Team:
With: Hemdy Al Ghora, Abd El Aziz Sbih, Youssef Jad Al-Haq, Fadi Srour
Editing: Yassine Tbessi
Sound design: Rafid Shamrokhi
Music: Shahd Awawdeh, Basic Rahula
World sales: Mad World
Venue: Cairo International Film Festival (Horizons of Arab Cinema)
In Arabic
82 minutes
