\n<\/p>\n
Being a Palestinian under Israeli occupation will not help someone make a good film, according to Rashid Masharawi, but a good film-maker will help Palestine.<\/p>\n
With his anthology film From Ground Zero (in Arabic: From Zero Distance) he attempts to do just that by bridging the space between the Palestinians in Gaza who have endured a campaign of annihilation behind closed doors to those around the world watching as an incomprehensibly vast tragedy unfolds in real time.<\/p>\n
The result is a collection of 22 shorts by Palestinian film-makers, ranging from documentary to vignettes and animation, which turns our attention not only to the past \u2013 and to the unrelenting violence of the present, when the death toll in Gaza continues to climb \u2013 but also to the future and what cannot be taken.<\/p>\n
\u201cCinema can protect memory and can keep Palestinians on the ground because films are like dreams, ideas. Nobody can occupy dreams. Nobody can occupy ideas. Nobody can occupy memory \u2026 Nobody can occupy your imagination,\u201d said Masharawi in an interview in London ahead of the film\u2019s release in UK cinemas on 12 September.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to be optimistic. We have to tell the people: \u2018Tomorrow it\u2019s a better day. Keep dancing, keep creating, keep making films, because it means you have the future.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>Film-maker Rashid Masharawi at the \u00c9tonnants Voyageurs festival in Saint-Malo, France, in June.<\/span> Photograph: Sophie Bassouls\/Sygma\/Getty Images<\/p>\n In a poignant start, we see in Selfie by Reema Mahmoud a woman compose a letter to an unknown friend that by the end is a message in a bottle cast into the sea. In Soft Skin, Khamis Masharawi captures young children learning stop animation to convey the horrors of parents inscribing their limbs with their names should a bomb hit.<\/p>\n But there are moments of dark humour too in Hell\u2019s Heaven as the narrator wakes up in a body bag. Only one film, Taxi Wanissa, is left incomplete as director Etimad Washah appears with a testimony partway through: with the death of her brother and his children, she could not continue.<\/p>\n In the anthology \u2013 which was Palestine\u2019s official entry to the 2025 Academy Awards \u2013 we see as people forge ahead despite being beset with new, unimaginable realities. And yet with the persistent buzzing of drones overhead, people continue to dance. In a sky that often rains bombardments and less often aid, children still fly kites. The weight of books left behind is measured against that of grief, and the sea is described to us as the only horizon. Drum sets are made from empty food tins, tea is shared, songs are still sung.<\/p>\n The films are noticeably devoid of the images of violence and maimed bodies that have poured out of Gaza for nearly two years \u2013 which made it \u201cpossible for people to watch and deal with\u201d these films, added Masharawi.<\/p>\n <\/span>Offerings, one of the shorts in From Ground Zero.<\/span><\/p>\n Filming months after 7 October and into 2024, film-makers became both the storytellers and the story. Thoughts of cinema were difficult to prioritise when refuge, food, loss and trauma took precedence under bombardment. When electricity was cut in the enclave it was impossible to charge equipment, and at times days passed with no communication.<\/p>\n The process <\/strong>was difficult, admitted Masharawi, not just as a Palestinian born in the al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza, but as a human being. It means having to face all that Israel is doing, he said, and with members of his own family killed and homes destroyed, it\u2019s very difficult, he added, to always share personal stories.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe in the power of the cinema, the image, the culture, the documentation,\u201d said Masharawi resolutely. \u201cIt\u2019s very important because people get used to, with time, slowly, the images they are watching on televisions. It\u2019s the same. They see explosions, they see ambulances, they see martyrs.<\/p>\n \u201cThis reminds them who they are, these people you are discussing. It\u2019s very important,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n If the film serves to remind us of the lives behind the more than 64,000 killed in Gaza, it also reminds us of the attempts made to silence Palestinian voices.<\/p>\n In July, Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen was killed by an extremist Jewish settler in the West Bank after working on the filming of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. The industry itself has seen a shift over time \u2013 \u201cvery late\u201d, adds Masharawi \u2013 as a growing chorus of film professionals calls for boycotts and signs open letters condemning the worsening humanitarian crisis.<\/p>\n \u201cSome things,\u201d said Masharawi, \u201cif it comes late, it\u2019s better than if they did not come at all.\u201d<\/p>\n But the tide of public opinion has held little sway over Masharawi, who since becoming the first Palestinian to show a feature at Cannes with Haifa in 1996, returned to Cannes in 2024 in protest. After organisers expressed their desire to keep politics out of the event, Masharawi staged tents like those in Gaza and screened From Ground Zero.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very important,\u201d he tells me, \u201cto make the films for life, for tomorrow \u2013 to make it with hope.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Being a Palestinian under Israeli occupation will not help someone make a good film, according to Rashid Masharawi, but a good film-maker will help Palestine. With his anthology film From Ground Zero (in Arabic: From Zero Distance) he attempts to do just that by bridging the space between the Palestinians in Gaza who have endured<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[4400,3280,11876,1394,4672,10278,1240,5055,12556],"class_list":{"0":"post-20422","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-documenting","9":"tag-ground","10":"tag-imagination","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-native","13":"tag-occupy","14":"tag-palestine","15":"tag-producer","16":"tag-zeros"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}