From Ground Zero is a collection of short films initiated by Palestinian film-maker Rashid Masharawi, in response to the events following the attacks of 7 October 2023. The project brings together 22 filmmakers from Gaza, offering a cinematic perspective on the daily lives, hopes and realities of the inhabitants.

The film follows British-Palestinian surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah after his 43-day ordeal in Gaza’s bombarded hospitals, where he became a symbol of Palestinian resistance. Why does he return, despite the trauma? How does his family cope? The answer lies in their shared passion: Palestine. Filmmakers Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi, close friends of the Abu Sittahs, document his raw journey from Gaza to Amman, Beirut, and beyond—exploring their collective State of Passion.

In the summer of 1982, the Israeli army invaded Beirut. During this time, it raided the Palestinian Research Center and looted its entire archive. The archive contained historical documents of Palestine, including a collection of still and moving images. Taking this as a premise, 'A Fidai Film' aims to create a counter-narrative to this loss, presenting a form of cinematic sabotage that seeks to reclaim and restore the looted memories of Palestinian history. It’s a poignant exploration of identity, memory, and resistance, told through a unique blend of documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques. (Doha Film Institute)

A secret museum in an art hotel sparks intrigue when it’s revealed to be a creation of controversial artist, Banksy. Using art as a form of political resistance, the hotel highlights the reality of life under Israeli military occupation. The film journeys through the hotel, Palestine, and a relevant past to dismantle the mainstream media’s bias towards the Palestinian struggle for freedom and equality.

To dance is to remember, to dance is to remind. As the Palestinian identity continues to be threatened with erasure, Palestinians turn to their folk dance, the dabke, as an homage to their history and culture, and to assert their existence. Dancing Palestine is a documentation of this embodiment of collective memory, as those who piece together a dabke choreography, piece together their identities, too. Together with the film - a performance in itself - the dabke is a testament to Palestinians’ deep love for life, and thus their need to contribute to the archive of Palestine, so that it continues to live on in the present.

Mohammed, a young Palestinian, is desperately looking for a taxi to take him through an Israeli checkpoint. The driver, Farouk, discovers that Mohammed has already failed to cross the checkpoint. Trouble begins.

In her early twenties, Hiam Abbass left her native Palestinian village to follow her dream of becoming an actress in Europe, leaving behind her mother, grandmother, and seven sisters. Thirty years later, her filmmaker daughter Lina returns with her to the village and questions for the first time her mother’s bold choices, her chosen exile and the way the women in their family influenced both their lives. Set between past and present, Bye Bye Tiberias pieces together images of today, family footage from the nineties and historical archives to portray four generations of daring Palestinian women who keep their story and legacy alive through the strength of their bonds, despite exile, dispossession, and heartbreak. In her early twenties, Hiam Abbass left her native Palestinian village to follow her dream of becoming an actress in Europe, leaving behind her mother, grandmother, and seven sisters. Thirty years later, her filmmaker daughter Lina returns with her to the village and questions for the first time her mother’s bold choices, her chosen exile and the way the women in their family influenced both their lives. Set between past and present, Bye Bye Tiberias pieces together images of today, family footage from the nineties and historical archives to portray four generations of daring Palestinian women who keep their story and legacy alive through the strength of their bonds, despite exile, dispossession, and heartbreak.

Three Promises is the story of a mother and her camera, of a son and his suppressed memories, and of an entire country. At the start of the 2000s, while the Israeli army is retaliating against the second intifada in the West Bank, Suha films her daily family life, punctuated by frequent trips underground and overwhelmed by the anguish of her two young children. At every moment of intense danger, she promises God that she will leave if they survive. In 2017, her son, the director of this film, discovers this archive and reconnects with this suppressed past, wondering with his mother what drove her to record a daily life of suffering, a stolen childhood, and why she delayed fleeing, paralyzed by the hope for change and burdened by the impossible choice between physical safety and emotional upheaval. While on the surface there emerges the heartrending portrait of everyday life in times of war, it is the staggering beauty of a mother’s love that is revealed between the lines. Blending the voice of the present with impressive family footage, Yousef completes the story begun by Suha, thus averting the act of forgetting, both personal and collective.

As Saamidah, a young Palestinian-American girl, anxiously starts her first day of school, she finds her identity in question when faced with a world map that doesn't include her homeland. Full movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAujeFizTi4

Already renowned for his work with archives, Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari takes this engagement to a new level in the subtly sarcastic short Paradiso, XXXI, 108. Through the recontextualised images of military training and explosions, appropriated from the “israeli” state propaganda, Aljafari exposes the occupation army’s obsession with weaponry, masculinity, and the gamification of war. The fact that the film does not feature a single Palestinian person highlights the ongoing dehumanisation of Palestinians in the eyes of the death cult that is the zionist entity.

Foragers depicts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine/Israel with wry humor and a meditative pace. Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, it employs fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs. The restrictions prohibit the collection of the artichoke-like ’akkoub and za’atar (thyme), and have resulted in fines and trials for hundreds caught collecting these native plants. For Palestinians, these laws constitute an ecological veil for legislation that further disposses them from their land while the occupation's state representatives insist on their scientific expertise and duty to protect. Following the plants from the wild to the kitchen, from the chases between the foragers and the nature patrol, to courtroom defenses, Foragers captures the joy and knowledge embodied in these traditions alongside their resilience to the prohibitive law. By reframing the terms and constraints of preservation, the film raises questions around the politics of extinction, namely who determines what is made extinct and what gets to live on.

Untold Revolution documents the beginning of the journey of the agricultural movement towards food sovereignty in Palestine, from an emancipatory ideological standpoint that seeks to break away from the dependence on the Israeli occupier and the global monopolistic companies. The movement advocates for the adoption of food production systems that are based on natural resources, local production inputs, values of cooperation, and agricultural practices that are culturally, environmentally, socially, economically, and nationally appropriate for the Palestinian context.

On October 26, 1929, Palestinian women initiated their women's movement. About 300 women gathered in Jerusalem from various parts of Palestine. They organized a silent demonstration, forming a car convoy to express their protest against the British High Commissioner's perceived bias against Arabs during the Buraq uprising. Here is their story on that day.

Beirut, Lebanon, Today. Wardi, an eleven-year-old Palestinian girl, lives with her whole family in the refugee camp where she was born. She learns about her family’s history through stories told to her by three earlier generations of refugees.

When a nation-wide uprising breaks out in 1987, a woman in Gaza must make a choice between love, family and freedom. Undaunted, she embraces all three, joining a clandestine network of women in a movement that forces the world to recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination for the first time. Naila and the Uprising chronicles the remarkable journey of Naila Ayesh whose story weaves through the most vibrant, nonviolent mobilization in Palestinian history – the First Intifada in the late 1980s.

The title of the work is borrowed from the Titan goddess of memory and the ‘inventress of language and words.’ The starting point for the project is a scar on the forehead of the artist’s grandfather. The scar was a result of a bullet shot in his direction by an Israeli soldier in the late 1940’s. Focusing on the sagas of myth and the construction of memory, members of the same family are filmed individually as they narrate their version of the same event. By scratching the surface of family history, the project explores the scar as a foundational hinge that arranges reality. The project also considers how one can play the role of a historian when the primary source is no longer there. ‘We do not remember. We rewrite memory much as history is rewritten.’ As such, recollection becomes an act of transformation rather than reproduction.

Neolithic masks taken from the West Bank and surrounding areas, and stored in private collections are hacked and 3d printed. The oldest known masks, dating 9,000 years, mutate from dead fossil to living matter. Copies circulate in Palestine, eerily akin to a black ski mask. A group of youth wear them at the site of a destroyed Palestinian village. Visiting ten out of 500 Palestinians villages ethnically cleansed by Israeli forces in 1948*.. Becoming other, becoming anonymous, in this accidental moment of ritual and myth. Initiating a series of trips to possess and almost be possessed by these strangely living sites of erasure and wreckage. Only now, returning to the site of destruction as the very site from which to cast a new projection that palpably evokes the potential of an unrealised time, not bound by the here and now of colonial time.

Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory is a meditation on the Palestinian people's struggle to produce an image and self-representation on their own terms in the 1960s and 1970s, with the establishment of the Palestine Film Unit as part of the PLO. Unearthing films stored in archives across the world after an unprecedented research and access, the film begins with popular representations of modern Palestine and traces the works of militant filmmakers in reclaiming image and narrative through revolutionary and militant cinema. In resurrecting a forgotten memory of struggle, Off Frame reanimates what is within the frame, but also weaves a critical reflection by looking for what is outside it, or what is off frame.

Through stop-motion animation, drawings and interviews, directors Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan recreate an astonishing true story from the First Palestinian Intifada: the Israeli army’s pursuit of eighteen cows, whose independent milk production on a Palestinian collective farm was declared “a threat to the natioIn the award-winning documentary The Wanted 18, directors Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan bring to life a remarkable story of nonviolent resistance during the First Intifada. It’s 1987 and the Israeli army is in hot pursuit of eighteen dairy cows in the town of Beit Sahour in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The cows are declared a threat to Israel’s national security after a group of Palestinians begin producing milk for the town’s residents. These newly minted dairy farmers have to learn the most basic skills—even just how to milk the cows! But they are determined to be a model of self-reliance and provide their community with alternatives to replace Israeli goods. The Israeli soldiers find themselves in a game of cat-and-mouse as residents of the town work together to shuttle the cows from barn to barn. The fugitive cows of Beit Sahour become legendary and the “intifada milk,” often distributed under cover of night, is a part of residents’ daily diet. Humorous and thought-provoking, The Wanted 18 shows the power of mass mobilization and nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation during the First Intifada – an era too-often simplistically depicted with stone-throwing Palestinian youth facing armed soldiers. This is a poignant film about nation-building from the bottom up, by the people not the politicians.nal security of the state of Israel.”

Five young art students awake to the sound of gunfire and bombardment. As the electricity has been cut and a curfew imposed, they do not know what is happening outside. To fill the time, the young men decide to prepare a Maqloubeh for lunch. They all contribute to the preparation of this traditional dish. Meanwhile, their families call, trying to find out what is going on.

Jordan, 1967. The world is alive with change: brimming with reawakened energy, new styles, music and an infectious sense of hope. In Jordan, a different kind of change is underway as tens of thousands of refugees pour across the border from Palestine. Having been separated from his father in the chaos of war, Tarek, 11, and his mother Ghaydaa, are amongst this latest wave of refugees. Placed in “temporary” refugee camps made up of tents and prefab houses until they would be able to return, they wait, like the generation before them who arrived in 1948. With difficulties adjusting to life in Harir camp and a longing to be reunited with his father, Tarek searches a way out, and discovers a new hope emerging with the times. Eventually his free spirit and curious nature lead him to a group of people on a journey that will change their lives. When I Saw You is the story of people affected by the times around them, in search of something more in their lives. A journey full of adventure, love, humor, and the desire to be free, but most of all this is a story about that moment in a person's life when he wakes up and finds the whole world is open and everything is possible - that moment you feel most alive. It is a journey of the human spirit that knows no borders.

The film unravels adventures of various attempts by individuals and groups during their search for gaps in the Wall in order to permeate and sneak past it. Lookouts, fear, angst, running, permeation, jumping off, crawling, passing through dark passages, are stages of a complex process of passing through to the "other side" and require a very specific state of mind. Some attempts end in failure, and others in success. Some are caught by the Israeli soldiers and others reach their destination. It's a cat and mouse game, in which failure leads to more persistence and success is an antithesis to cat's theories of security.

Jamila’s Mirror deals with the memories of Palestinian female guerilla fighters, currently in their forties, who were involved in military operations during their teen years. link: https://youtu.be/dsyp_P5tdoA?si=58VOYhFVoQh58a3e

A Palestinian seeks Israeli permission to waive curfew to give his son a fine wedding. The military governor’s condition is that he and his officers attend. The groom berates his father for agreeing. Women ritually prepare the bride; men prepare the groom. Guests gather. The Arab youths plot violence. One Israeli officer swoons in the heat and Arab women take her into the cool house. A thoroughbred gets loose and runs to a mined field; soldiers and Arabs must cooperate to rescue it. As darkness falls, tensions between army and villagers rise, and the groom’s wedding-night anger and impotence threaten family dignity and honor. Can cool heads prevail?

In Layaly Badr’s documentary short, Road to Palestine, seven-year-old Layla – who has been badly injured in an air raid – lives in a refugee camp outside Palestine. Layla and her friends describe how they imagine Palestine, despite never having seen it.

Return to Haifa is based on Kanafani’s novel the plot of which takes place in 1967, when Palestinian refugees living in the newly occupied territories had an opportunity to visit the places from which they had been expelled in 1948. Saeed and Safiyya, a Palestinian couple expelled from Haifa in 1948, visit the home that had been their own. Miriam, a Holocaust survivor and now a Jewish Israeli citizen who lives in their house, lets them in. She moved there with her husband shortly after the Palestinian couple had been uprooted. The Palestinian couple returns to Haifa hoping to discover something about their baby, Khaldun, whom they had left at home that April morning in 1948, not realizing that neither of them would be able to return. The abandoned baby had been adopted by Miriam and her husband who gave him a Hebrew name – Dov, now a soldier in the Israeli army. This tragic encounter depicted by the movie emblematizes the Nakba’s being not only the tragedy of the Palestinian people but also of the Israeli Jews who cannot escape confronting this past and becoming accountable for it. Link: https://youtu.be/vJ8bj_HgLYM?si=V94db11kTc6_reio

Set in the 1950s, The Dupes traces the destinies of three different men brought together by their dispossession, their despair and their hope for a better future. The protagonists are Palestinian refugees who are trying to make their way across the border from Iraq into Kuwait, the 'Promised Land,' concealed in the steel tank of a truck. Representing different dimensions of the Palestinian experience, each one believes he can make a new life for himself, but as the film’s title suggests, their flight is no solution. One of the first Arab films to address the Palestinian question, 'The Dupes' is based on the 1962 novella 'Men in the Sun' by assassinated Palestinian writer, artist and resistance leader, Ghassan Kanafani. Set in Palestine and Iraq, and filmed in Syria by Tewfik Saleh, an Egyptian director, the film was banned in several Arab countries due to its implied criticisms of Arab governments.