Last Shot

An on-screen dedication opens Parham Rahimzadeh’s moving short, Last Shot.

“For those who gave their lives for the truth,” it reads. The film proves to be a poignant tribute to those who have risked and given their lives to report the truth about what is happening in Gaza. Probing at questions of displacement and assimilation, the role of art in highlighting injustice and the appetite of western spectators for such images when they come from so far-flung places. Rahimzadeh craft a heart-rending portrait built around the object of a heart-rending portrait, and their film competes this week for the Tiger Shorts Compeitions in Rotterdam.

The story sees the eponymous picture surface when a package is received by Musa (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) in Rotterdam. Inside is a camera with a cracked lens – that of his brother Samir (Mo’min Swaitat) who has been back home in Gaza working as press and who, it becomes evident, was killed in a bombing. Upon processing the roll of film in Samir’s camera and seeing the awful final photograph of his body, Musa and his partner, Alisa (Milena Kompaniiets) a fellow photographer from Ukraine, try to get the image seen.

Elrahman is fantastic in the lead role, from the jittering hand with which he first tries to look at the negative, to his frustration when he hears a gallery curator on the phone speaking about how Samir’s images from Gaza made a board member feel uncomfortable. The film foregrounds the experience of trying to fit into a European context when the truth of what is happening back home is so shattering. It wrestles with what it truly means for institutions to prioritise displaced voices and the unwelcome politics that can sometimes overshadow such efforts.

Most of all, though, it is a beautiful, brief snapshot of lose and brotherly love that ends with a perfect moment in which both Elrahman and Kompaniiets excel with understated gravitas. As the credits roll with a list of journalists killed in Gaza, Samir’s fate moves from the personal to the universal. Rahimzadeh’s film does an impeccable job of highlighting both perspectives.

Director: Parham Rahimzadeh
Cast: Muhammad Abed Elrahman, Mo’min Swaitat, Milena Kompaniiets
Screenplay: Parham Rahimzadeh, Karim Mrabti
Producer: Karim Mrabti
Cinematography: Sjors Mosman
Editing: Richelle van Loon
Music: Zeinab Shaath, Key Clef
Sound: Selle Inti Sellink
Production design: Saher Dweiry
Production companies: Mohsin Films (Netherlands)
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) (Tiger Shorts Competition)
In English, Arabic
17 minutes