Filmed in July 2024, when Gaza was under the heaviest bombardment in its history, Mai Saad’s and Ahmed Eldanf’s documentary One More Show is competing for the Golden Pyramid at Cairo, where it makes its world premiere. The courageous film follows the Free Gaza Circus — Youssef, Batout, Ismail, Mohamed and Just — as they move from one bombed-out street to another, turning rubble into a stage to celebrate another day of survival, while leaving room to worry about tomorrow.
Saad and Eldanf have made a film that is both a record of horror and a hymn to persistence. The circus men, displaced from the north and Rafah to Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah, keep performing to cheer children in shelters and broken courtyards. They juggle, dance, beatbox, and clown on long stilts. Their headquarters, where they train, huddle, cook and bunk down to sleep, is in what used to be a populated house, now abandoned on a street in Al Zawida.
The Free Gaza Circus was founded and was able to perform during the 2008 war, later surviving 2012 and 2014 and the devastating offenses launched by Israeli forces. Batout (Donald Duck in Arabic), whose performance imitates the voice of the popular Disney character, was born and raised in Gaza, but he immigrated to Germany to settle down. After finally getting his residency, he went back home just months before October 2023, to marry his sweetheart and see his family. Tragically, his fiancee was killed in a bombing. Though he is the most cheerful, he carries the weight of the trauma and the fear of an endless war and being stuck in the Strip forever, a reality that two million other people are living. His residency will soon expire, but he keeps performing, laughing louder than the grief he carries.
In performing and in life, the ethos of the group is simple: look ahead. Even when one of the young members makes a mistake juggling, Youssef, the founder and veteran performer, advises him “You can’t let anyone see your mistake.”
This resilience, born not of privilege but of necessity, gives One More Show its haunting power. The crew has to fish for transportation every day back and forth to Khan Younis. One time it’s five shekels for a motorised tricycle, another time for a horse cart. As they are driving, the film shows them against the shimmering blue of the Mediterranean, a sea they can no longer swim in, a horizon they can no longer reach.
The film feels lived, not staged. The only time when the camera is not handheld and carried around is when one of the performers juggles and stands in the same spot. As the troupe drives through what remains of Khan Younis, they sing a folk song: “To the bird flying towards our town, may my eyes protect you and God’s eyes keep you safe. Pass by Gaza and kiss its land.”
The camera lingers as they fall silent, staring at the ruins, and what has become of what was once a beautiful city. Now it is waves and waves of market tents, piles of garbage, debris on both sides, and discarded infrastructure. The silence in this film feels like a performance in itself, almost an exhausted pause between acts of survival.
The film’s strength lies in this balance between tragedy and absurdity. One scene shows the performers cutting vegetables by phone light as explosions echo in the distance. “It’s just the echo,” someone says, as though convincing himself. Another sequence shows them riding a donkey cart through the ruins, grinning like kings and creating Instagram stories. Moments like this make One More Show both a war film and an epic of endurance.
This endurance does not make it a feel-good film. Yes, the Free Gaza Circus and its members are making ends meet to cheer up kids in shelters and the displaced population, but they themselves are also displaced, famished, traumatized and scared of the future.
The fact that they are protagonists in a documentary that is screened at an international film festival and covered by the English-language press does not make them indispensable or protected. In that sense, the crew are not portrayed as defiant macho heroes with hard living, hard performing attitude, something impossible to imagine in the context of Gaza. The film gives them a chance to be fragile.
When rumors of a ceasefire reach Deir al-Balah, one member of the troupe is seen rejoicing and promising to take his friend to eat falafel when they head home. Another calls his mother, and another is pessimistic. Minutes later, another strike hits the same street where their headquarters is located. They rush to help, collecting human body parts wrapped in blankets. “Were they asleep or awake?” one asks quietly. “When you are blown to pieces, do you feel pain?” The filmmakers do not flinch from such questions; they let them hang, unanswered.
Eventually in the coming years, there will be films and documentaries about the PTSD caused by the Gaza war and its effect on Israeli soldiers returning home (Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper is a textbook example), a topic already discussed in some of the Western press. Films like When the Smoke Clears (2017), Waltz with Bashir (2008), Lebanon (2009), and Synonyms (2019) all portray Israeli soldiers dealing with the trauma of participating in conflicts killing Palestinians, but the villain has a clear name: PTSD.
But the traumatised individuals in One More Show cannot afford to stop and name their condition. The accumulation of previous wars has created a persistence that can be admired but also should be cause for deep sorrow. In one scene, Youssef cannot believe how “people have adjusted when a missile is dropped.” He himself, a survivor of the 2009, 2012, 2014 wars on Gaza (and hopefully the 2021 aggression), counts to six when a missile is dropped on the ground, and then covers his ear, a sign that he no longer feels the alertness that comes with a bombing. Since he was a child, Youssef says, the presence of drones and quadcopters pierces his ears, disrupts the TV reception, and may bomb a nearby house.
Hollywood has long falsely portrayed the Middle East as a dusty bazaar of violence and despair (with a yellowish hue closer to the Mexican filter than the Eastern European bluish-grey vibe). In One More Show, the dust, the carnage, and the violence are real, but so is the optimism and resilience of the people. The directors refuse to aestheticize ruin, and rather focus on spotlighting moments of hope.
As they perform in the street, older men and women as well as children dance and cheer around the debris. They make each moment count. They do not know when their end might come. Since it was filmed in 2024, it is agonizing to think that some of the people who were featured in the documentary may have since lost their lives.
Director: Mai Saad, Ahmed Eldanaf
Screenplay: Mai Saad, Ahmed Eldanaf
Cast: Youssef Khedr, Mohamed Ayman, Mohamed Abed (JUST), Ahmed Zeyara (Batout), Ismail Farahat, Mohamed El Akhras (El Tukri), Ashraf Khedr, Adam Anwar, Mohamed Hawleh, Mohamed El Sheikh (Ankabout), Ahmed El Agha, Mahmoud Al Zawaida, Malak Saad El Deen, Ahmed Shaaban
Cinematography: Ahmed Eldanaf, Yousef Mashharawi, Mahmoud Mashharawi
Editing: Sara Abdallah
Sound Design: Moustafa Shaaban
Producer: Baho Bakhsh, Safei Eldin Mahmoud
Coproducer: Mohamed Hefzy
Production companies: Red Star, Film Clinic
Venue: Cairo International Film Festival
In Arabic
75 minutes
