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Synopsis
Gaza's untold stories From ground zero.
"From Ground Zero" is a compelling project that brings together 22 short films created by talented filmmakers from Gaza. Launched by Rashid Masharawi, a notable Palestinian filmmaker, the initiative emerged amid the backdrop of conflict, aiming to provide a platform for young artists to express themselves through their craft. Each film, ranging from 3 to 7 minutes, presents a unique perspective on the current reality in Gaza. The project captures the diverse experiences of life in the Palestinian enclave, including the challenges, tragedies, and moments of resilience faced by its people. With a mix of genres such as fiction, documentary, docu-fiction, animation, and experimental cinema, "From Ground Zero" showcases a rich tapestry of stories that reflect the sorrow, joy, and hope inherent in Gazan life.
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More
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22 Palestinian short films. 22 Palestinian stories. 22 Palestinian voices.
A collaboration of not just people, but also of art. A puppet show. A story told with construction paper. A song and dance. A voicemail from a loved one. A message in a bottle. A film cut short.
From Ground Zero is a reminder of how powerful art can be— not just illuminating Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestine, but also as a tool to amplify Palestinian voices.
Since this is Letterboxd, I wanted to point out that IndieWire’s chief film critic, David Ehrlich, is currently hosting a fundraiser for one week to raise money for The Palestine Red Crescent Society. Currently, the goal is a little more than halfway there. You…
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The brief was simple: Palestinian director Rashid Mashwari invited Gazan filmmakers to submit three-to-six-minute shorts about their day-to-day experience of life under threat of annihilation. The results are as anguished, eclectic, and persevering as the people of Palestine themselves, and — under Mashwari’s supervision — they’ve been collected into a 22-part anthology that offers approximately one story for every 2,100 people who have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023 (to go by the latest published figures). That “From Ground Zero” exists is both a tragedy and a miracle in unequal measure, a fact that proves impossible to forget over the course of a film whose every frame has been rescued from the rubble of an ongoing genocide.
As…
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It’s the constant protruding buzz of the oppressors above that linger throughout each moment. Living each day with the fear of death every nightfall. I weep for those unable to finish their stories, the dreams snuffed out without a thought. Those just begging for help in a world that is only watching and not acting. The privilege that I take to be able to leave the theater I watched this in and comfortably go home. That I can spend the rest of my day as I choose and feel safe. For as I write these very words there are human beings that will not see tomorrow due to an ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Their history and stories are…
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It’s hard to give a specific rating because of the varying degrees of quality inherent in any anthology film. However, the storytelling being voiced from Palestinian artists living in the Gaza strip amidst the ongoing crisis certainly warrants attention and is an urgently compelling watch.
2024 Ranked
2025 Oscar Watchlist
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Essential. Artists exploring their grief and their hope through the power of film. Preserves the experiences that so much of the world continues to turn away from through its anthological structure. It is our duty to hear, witness, and amplify the voices of the Palestinian people as they withstand the current ongoing genocide.
From Ground Zero is currently in theaters.
Click here to find showtimes near you.
Click here for ways to aid the Palestinian people.
Free Palestine.
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Each of these 22 short films feels like a miracle. That filmmakers in Gaza were able to create while enduring a genocide for the past 15 months is a testament to the resilience of the Palestinian people.
In the mix of this anthology film: children dance on the beach; men dig for bodies under rubble; a mother recycles precious water; a donkey lumbers down a road filled with refugees; an artist displays her sketches, reflecting on how the university she wished to attend was destroyed; a girl wipes her and her brother’s names from their bodies, explaining that they were put there in the case of a bombing.
Though death is a constant, so too are the dreams of those who remain in Gaza. Free Palestine 🇵🇸
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I’m asking myself if it is even appropriate to rate From Ground Zero, a collection of 22 short films made by Palestinian directors who’ve all been actively affected by the ongoing genocide in Palestinian and crafted a wide variety of shorts, some involving animation, others documentaries, others fiction, some I’m not sure of anymore, and one short that stood out to me above all was presented unfinished and that felt like an even more powerful statement than I could imagine.
We can not avert our eyes from this genocide. Free Palestine.
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Midway through the screening, one of the producers came to say that currently all the directors are still alive
Screened as part of London Palestine Film Festival
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Any peace we have now is murderous peace
The short "Forgive me cinema" fucking broke my heart. A memorial duty ,22 short films, 22 different directors. Creativity in chaos, lost souls with the mental strength of showing everyday life when you're Palestinian. A little girl and her PTSD every time she hears a noise, fearing it's a drone, to a narration with puppets made from tuna cans, a boy in front of his teacher's grave, to a will because you couldn't finish the film, this isn't acting, this is their lives with their tired eyes waiting for some semblance of peace.
I've already said everything I thought about these horrors in the Oscar-nominated documentary No Other Land , but I…
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Free Palestine.
The lives of people displaced from their homes, yet I see not an ounce of anger or bitterness, though they have every right to be resentful and angry. They wish to go home, to return. They wish to live again. This collection of stories has one strong and continuous message throughout, the hope of the human spirit. They cannot crush the spirit of these people. Some of the strongest and bravest people I’ve ever seen in my life, who deserve to go through all the emotions and feelings they want to, and deserve so much better. Not one single person featured in any of these stories has known a moment of their life without occupation.
Palestine will be free.
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With this film, No Other Land, Lyd, A Stone’s Throw, and A Fidai Film it has been an exceptional year for Palestinian filmmakers, against all odds.
The way Rashid Masharawi's structures the 22 short films in this anthology really blew me away as it ebbs and flows between anguish and hope. These shorts draw on the rich tradition of Palestinian cinema and as I watched I thought back to films like Layaly Badr's The Road to Palestine, Rosalind Nashashibi's Electrical Gaza, May Odeh's Diaries, Dahna Abourahme's Until When, Jackie Reem Salloum's Slingshot Hip Hop, and Kamal Aljafari's A Fidai Film.
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Years from now, when the shameful apartheid state is relegated to memory, there will be expensive films made about Gaza. Its resilience and tragedy will be made palatable for western audiences, allowing them to achieve an emotional catharsis in retroactive guilt. It will win awards. It will be called “important.” And it may very well deserve these awards. It may very well be important. But it won’t be for Gaza. It will be for those among us doing nothing to resist their complicity in imperialism at this very moment, and will search for forgiveness in their appreciation of fictionalized retellings.
Against all odds, Palestinians are making films now. In Gaza. Where are the white liberals who showed up in droves…
