TORONTO — Probably the most urgent crisis in the world today is the genocide in Gaza, a war that was most likely planned years ago when Israel pulled all the Jewish settlers out of the region to make way for an eventual final slaughter. The problem certainly didn’t start with the desperate jailbreak from the world’s largest outdoor concentration camp that took place last October 7th. Palestinians have long been fighting an existential battle to preserve their people, land, and culture. The world is in desperate need of stories coming from the victims themselves.
Getting the word out is most critical at this time. We’ve seen a record number of journalists attempting to report on the brutal realities being killed by settlers and the IDF. Amazingly there are even filmmakers determined to put together artful cinema as the fighting blazes around them. The Toronto International Film Festival this year has provided an excellent service by premiering the works of nascent and veteran Palestinian cultural activists.
Among the several new and exciting films at TIFF is a uniquely structured collection. From Ground Zero consists of 3- to 6-minute short cinematic jewels from 22 artists/filmmakers living in the besieged Gaza Strip. Each one is unique in style and content and captures the many moods and realities of life under the oppressive Israeli Occupation. Many segments are powerful and have more to say than even some full-length feature films. Producer and editor Rashid Masharawi, a director known for many great Palestinian films, (Ticket to Jerusalem, Laila’s Birthday) has created a Film Fund and has begun touring the world with the film that gives voice to the creative Gazan artists who offer dignified testimonies about the struggle to survive in a land being stolen from them. Rashid said to the emotionally affected audience, “We make cinema to make life better, to make life easier, to make it more understood, to make life more beautiful, and to help human beings.”
Winner of Best Screenplay at Venice, Happy Holidays is a Jewish/Palestinian melodrama with a clever but convoluted plot involving parallel love stories that all come together in the end. It moves back and forth from intimate personal details to the overall political framework. Award-winning director of Ajami, Scandar Copti, wrote, directed, and edited this complex study of social challenges among Jewish and Palestinian families living in the challenging Jerusalem society. He used non-actors in a semi-documentary style shot chronologically as the characters developed naturally in the plot. No special lighting or microphones were used and some actors played roles contrary to their own beliefs, like the racist Jewish mother who in real life was a peace activist. Director Copti says this casting happens because “it’s difficult to find a racist to play a racist role.” The story takes the position that when the time comes for peace it will be a difficult process to intermix people because of the longstanding rivalry between the two cultures and their fractious history. The film addresses anti-Arab racism, and the plot details are better understood with a deeper knowledge of both Jewish and Palestinian culture. The final dramatic scene was timed to take place during the actual annual memorial for deceased soldiers where citizens stand in silence while sirens wail for two minutes. Through the crowd covered with umbrellas walks this one defiant person challenging the prevalence of hate and war.
Winner of the top documentary jury and audience prizes in the prestigious Panorama section at the Berlin Film Festival, a must-see documentary No Other Land is another collective Palestinian film, but not all of the participants are Palestinian. Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham helped document the destruction of the occupied mountain town of Masafer Yatta in the northern West Bank. It’s where Palestinian activist Basel Adra grew up, watching his father and grandfather fight to keep their land from the Occupation forces, which he began filming years ago. It’s another heartbreaking story of the loss and destruction of Palestinian land and culture, as powerful a message as any film made on the subject. The brave filmmakers who spent years putting this film together and especially the Israeli activists who put their lives on the line deserve praise for their dedication to the struggle for truth and justice. It’s ultimately a human dilemma, not Arab vs Jew: It’s good vs bad, hate vs love, peace vs war. What the Israeli government has been doing to Palestinians for almost a century, is one of the most unconscionable actions in recent history. For more info on the film, TIFF programmer Thom Powers hosts a Pure Nonfiction Podcast which has an interview with two of the directors.
Director Mahdi Fleifel, known for his captivating award-winning 2012 bio doc A World Not Ours, has crafted his first full-length narrative, To a Land Unknown. Loosely adapted from Ghassan Kanafani’s 1962 novella Men in the Sun, the film follows two young Palestinian men who end up in Athens as refugees forced to survive in a new and hostile world of drugs and crime.
Note: This year TIFF offered a special “Active Listener” service during and after the screening of selected films to offer peer-to-peer emotional support, mental health resources if desired, or to speak confidentially to an empathetic individual. They were available for films about Palestine and the Gaza War, and First Nation traumas, showing the effects that movies can have on people as filmmakers bare their souls to the world.
Bonus extra
As a result of the ongoing Gaza tragedy, many Palestinian filmmakers are making their work available free to the public. Here is an astonishing amount of links to great political cinema, helping to provide much-needed information about the history and people of Palestine.
- Documentary films (more than 300 films): https://bit.ly/2RrCDUH
- Feature films (25 films): https://bit.ly/2T085dh
- Animated films (5 films): https://bit.ly/3bwHevC
- Lists on YouTube of about 40 films about Palestine that were broadcast on Al Jazeera Documentary:https://bit.ly/3yp2nBI, https://bit.ly/2SSpMeC, and https://bit.ly/3f0KK3P
- A collection of Palestinian films, some of which are available for free: https://bit.ly/3oFcs9z
- A collection of short films by Palestinian female directors: https://bit.ly/3v39SMP
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