From Ground Zero

From Ground Zero (Palestine-France-Qatar-UAE-Switzerland-Denmark 2024) Is a feature comprising 22 short films made by filmmakers in Gaza. It is produced by the Gazan filmmaker Rashid Masharawi and executive produced by Michael Moore. The film opens in the UK on 12th September distributed by Cosmic Cat. You can find the promotion of the film on this website which also carries a list of cinemas showing the film over the next few weeks. Here’s the opening para of the press release:

Charming, wistful, heartbreaking, hopeful and urgent. Palestine’s official entry to the 2025 Academy Awards, From Ground Zero, brings dozens of emerging Palestinian artists to the fore in an urgent cry for humanity from a people under siege.

You can also go to the official website of Mashawari Films and find out more about the 22 films. The UK and Ireland release seems to be through both specialised and multiplex cinemas so there should be at least one screening near most people. We hope to catch it at some point.

Palestine 36 (Palestine- France-Qatar-UK 2025)

This film has recently been shown at the Toronto International Film Festival, the biggest and most celebrated North American festival where it received a standing ovation of over 20 minutes. It is the Palestine entry for the Oscars in the Best International Feature category and not surprisingly it has been picked up by Curzon for distribution in the UK. The BBC and BFI have both supported the production.

We are very interested in this film as it is from the celebrated Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir whose previous features When I Saw You (Palestine 2012) and Wajib (Palestine 2017) are covered on this blog. Her new film is an ambitious ‘docudrama’, as one reviewer has termed it, and the title refers to the ‘uprisings’ against the British Mandate rule over Palestine in 1936. It will be interesting to compare it with Michael Winterbottom’s Shoshana (UK-Italy 1923) which deals with Jewish attacks on British Mandate forces in the late 1930s. The film is listed by the Film Distributors Association (FDA) for release by Curzon on 31st October 2025.

The Voice of Hind Rajab (Tunisia-France-US 2025)

This film from Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania had the same reaction at Venice as that for Palestine 36 at Toronto. There was then some disquiet that the film did not win the major prize at the festival. Ben Hania’s two previous films were Oscar nominated and this will be Tunisia’s Official entry in 2026. The film is inspired by the voice of a 6 year-old girl in Gaza who is trapped in a car after a bombing. Here is the short story outline from IMDb:

Red Crescent volunteers receive an emergency call. A 6-year old girl is trapped in a car under IDF fire in Gaza, pleading for rescue. While trying to keep her on the line, they do everything they can to get an ambulance to her.

Below is how the film’s appearance at Venice was covered in a Turkish TV news broadcast:

There is no news yet about a UK cinema release, but we must hope for at least festival screenings in the UK or online releases if a distributor does not emerge in the next few months.

Who Is Still Alive (Switzerland-France-Palestine 2005)

The documentary Who is Still Alive from Swiss filmmaker Nicolas Wadimoff was also screened at Venice. Here the director of the film explains what impelled him to make the film.

https://cineuropa.org/en/video/rdid/483058/

I experienced for the first time what it is to be with someone who experience a genocide, which is different from a war

From the IMDb storyline:

Nine voices from Gaza. Nine people who tell of their life before, then during the war, in the neighbourhood whose outline they draw in chalk on the ground. By recreating their own Jabaliya, Nuseirat or Khan Younis, each character unveils their minuscule and fragile space of humanity, which corresponds to the dreams, hopes, dangers, comfort and discomfort of a life oppressed, prevented, but not yet reduced to ashes, not yet totally plunged into oblivion. By telling us their stories, the protagonists attempt to reconnect with themselves, to stop being ghosts. Simply, to come back to life.

There is no sign of a wide international release for this film as yet. In fact the film seems to be suffering from visa restrictions in presenting the nine Palestinians from Gaza to distributors overseas.

Palestinian filmmakers working outside the Occupied Territories and international filmmakers determined to give Palestinians a voice have made and are making films which try to expose the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. We must try to support them.