A scene from the Palestinian antological film “from Ground Zero”
One of the ideas that is constantly going through the mind when watching from Ground Zero, an anthology of 22 short films and documentaries of Palestinian filmmakers, is whether everyone we see on the screen is now alive. Regarding data of more than 60,000 killed in the last two years in Gaza, in what the human rights organization has accused Israel of genocide implementation, there is a possibility that at least some of them have already been killed.
Anthology 2024, introductory film 17. International documentary and short -term Keral (IDSFK) festival, was selected for the world premiere after the world premiere and selected the project director and Funder Rashid Masharawi to organize protest protesting. Common to all 22 shorts in anthology is the background filled with ruby buildings in the middle, which are scattered everyday things that belonged to families that all ended in embossed camps. It could be impossible to find a background without debris in Gaza after 2023.
One of the most prominent shorts in anthology is the school day Ahmed Al Danafa, in which a young boy, walks on his tents and ruins of his school will end up in a cemetery where he sits next to his dead teacher to study daily lessons. In the soft skin of Khamis Masharawi, the group of children has a discussion of the practice of their mothers writing their names on their limbs to identify them if they are killed in bomb attacks. The discussion deals with them and creates a moving animation of children and shaken these names to overcome their nightmares.
The stories are not all full of despair, only many of them reveal people’s ability to find hope and even humor in the worst situations. Hebe Hebe Karim Satoum’s Hebe Hebe had him awakened in a body bag inside a small freezing tent and trying to reverse the events that led him to end up inside. It turned out that he had negotiated with the authorities to save his bag on his body, which could be more useful for him in a freezing cold than when he was eventually dead. In Nidal Damo, everything is fine, standup comedian literally trying to make his teammates feel so in the middle of extreme suffering, with their brilliant performances in refugee camps.
The endless suffering of the Palestinians, directly from the Nakba, the extensive displacement and killing of the Palestinians in 1948, to the present is captured in the awakening of Mahdi Kreirah, a puppet video in which a father who lost his memory in 2014.
For the world in general, which is anestpt from everyday reports of normalized killing hundreds of Palestinians and in relief camps, food fronts and hospitals, these personal stories can be a hard -hit watch. When inserting faces, names and stories for this continuing tragedy, Ground Zero is one of the remarkable collaborative film efforts of our time.
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Published – August 23 2025 20:25
