‘We’re All on the Front Line’: How Film Brings Gaza to the World

By Benay Blend

The movie 'Gaza Bride 17' was released in late spring 2023. (Photo: Supplied)

For Palestinians, there is no ambiguity about the identity of the monsters that they face. They have had plenty of time since the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948.

In their 1988 book How the War was Remembered: Hollywood and Vietnam, Leonard Quart and Albert Auster noted that there were very few fiction films that dealt directly with the war. It took some time to reflect on the many aspects of that period before the appearance of low-budget, meaningful films, including Coming Home (1978), The Deerhunter (1978), and Apocalypse Now (1979).

During and after Iraq, Quart and Auster explain that most films focused more on returning soldiers whose trauma impacted their lives as well as that of their families.

Elaborating on the Valley of Elah (2007), the authors quote director Paul Haggis, who saw the film as “asking questions about where we are in America right now and what’s happening,” a metaphor of the place in the bible where David defeats Goliath.

“What monsters are being fought?” Quart and Auster ask. “It’s hard to say” because “there’s never an unambiguous picture of who the monster is.”

For Palestinians, there is no ambiguity about the identity of the monsters that they face. They have had plenty of time since the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 to confront the harsh reality of life under Occupation, ethnic cleansing that has only escalated after October 7.

There is no safe refuge for Palestinians–and by default their supporters—in what Ramzy Baroud calls in Gramscian terms the “Interregnum,” also known as the “age of monsters.”

An intermediary period in which the old guard fights for relevance while more suitable alternatives strive for meaning, this current period is one in which Palestinian film suggests an urgency that is unique to time and place.

Farah Nabulsi’s film The Teacher was made before Oct. 7th but was released during the time of genocide. Though it depicts events around the year 2011, it remains relevant today.

While the focus now is on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Nabulsi’s film reminds viewers that life in Palestine’s Occupied West Bank remains precarious. Based on a true story, it opens with Basem (played by Saleh Bakri) driving to his school. By the side of the road is an Israeli soldier cradling his rifle, a harbinger of things to come.

Several other film reviewers focused on what they saw as fragmentation, too many sub-plots that are not seamlessly brought together. For example, Peyton Robinson charges that “Nabulsi’s film touches the heart but loses grip on the mind as it journeys to juggle more subplots than its hands can handle.”

What Robinson calls “a fractured mosaic of ideas” is what life is like for many Palestinians, whether in the West Bank, the ’48, or Gaza.

In the Occupied West Bank, where Nabulsi’s film was made, everyday life is fragmented by checkpoints and illegal settlers who are committing daily violence that Palestinians must endure.

Prison is almost a rite of passage for Basem’s students, as it was for him, who like many others, learned the value of education while inside. Basem knows that literacy holds the key to defining individual as well as national history, thus providing a counterpoint to Israel’s official story.

In an interview with Amy Goodman, Nabulsi elaborates on this notion of fragmentation as she describes the making of the film. “We struggled on many levels, you know, the normal pragmatic things of checkpoints and roadblocks, but really dealing with the oppression and the very blatant abuse and humiliation of Palestinians is something that weighs on you when you’re trying to carry out cinema.”

In the same interview, Bakri adds: “We are scattered all around, not able or not allowed to gather and to work together, to learn from each other, to tell our story in a way, in a perfect way, in a way that — in a complete way.”

Unlike American directors, creative artists like Nabulsi and her cast are directly involved in the story. For the former, it is not a matter of their life or death as it is for Palestinians, plus they seldom focus on the real victims of American imperialism—the Vietnamese, Iraqis, and Afghanis, to name a few.

In the interview with Goodman, Bakri explains that his work involves turning tragedy into creative energy, and this he sees as “a form of resistance that in the same time it cures …our souls.”

Moreover, it is possible with cinema to challenge Israel’s version with a counter narrative that shifts the focus from conqueror to ordinary people’s stories. In Gaza, journalists do the same.

Mahmoud Atassi’s Eyes of Gaza (2024), for example, portrays the risks that journalists take to tell the truth about the genocide in Gaza.

While more than 200 journalists have been killed during the Gaza genocide, Eyes of Gaza follows three who had survived as of the making of the film: Abdul Qadir Sabbah, Mahmoud Sabbah, and Mohammed Ahmed.

Unlike Nabulsi’s work, Atassi was not physically in Gaza when he made the film. In an interview with the New Arab, he explains that they communicated via the internet when service was available. Nevertheless, because he had lived through strife in Syria, Atassi has an understanding of living in a war zone that most Western directors lack.

“The Israeli army has built an image of being peaceful and protective, marketing themselves as soldiers who like to live and dance,” Atassi claims. “They spend millions on this image. But when you see videos from Gaza showing the destruction and the suffering of the people, the truth is exposed.”

“It’s part of a broader plan, not just for Palestine, but for Syria as well. Israel wants to create areas with no people, so they can take control of the land,” he continues. “They’re bombing areas, demolishing them, and then taking over the land.”

The film focuses on this bombing of civilians, and the journalists who rush to cover it.

It begins with a missile strike, then follows the three as they walk to film it. These are not scenes shown on Western media—injured children, both physically and psychologically; apartment buildings that once held vibrant life, now in rubble with its inhabitants trapped below; children picking grass and herbs that their mothers might cook for dinner.

Journalists film the tragedies in hopes that the world will act, but they insist on portraying their people as more than victims. Aware that their own lives are constantly at risk, the three stop to play with kids who are playing a make-shift game, all grabbing at life when possible.

On the way to Al-Shifa Hospital to visit an injured colleague, they stop to talk with the father of an injured journalist. “We’re all on the front line here,” he tells them, especially his son who was documenting the destruction that the Israelis caused when they deliberately targeted him.

Journalism is a weapon, the older man says, it is a weapon of resistance. Indeed, Eyes of Gaza is a harrowing film to watch, but it also conveys hope, like when a child says that her wish is to return to school so that she can resume her studies, but also play soccer and draw.

One of the journalists jokes that he will set up a tent with solar and a bag of flour so that he can attract a bride. Throughout the film he expresses this desire. Despite the current horror, he looks forward to better times when the “war” is finally over.

Commenting on a short list of Palestinian films that can be viewed online, Nehad Khader explains that

“Palestinian stories create space for us to love each other, to love ourselves, to love our cause. They document the history of my people’s freedom struggle. Palestinian stories also do something more radical: they help us think both more broadly and deeply about racism, incarceration, resistance, resource theft, apartheid, and even climate change.”

The films described above do all of these things and more. By showing the world what it does not want to see, they take their place within a space that the late revolutionary fighter/journalist Ghassan Kanafani called cultural resistance, a means that provides a counternarrative to Israel’s official story.

– Benay Blend earned her doctorate in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. Her scholarly works include Douglas Vakoch and Sam Mickey, Eds. (2017), “’Neither Homeland Nor Exile are Words’: ‘Situated Knowledge’ in the Works of Palestinian and Native American Writers”. She contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.

The views expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Palestine Chronicle.