Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Directors never tire of describing the seemingly impossible hurdles they have overcome to make a movie. But even the most beleaguered of them might be incredulous to learn that the Oscar-shortlisted From Ground Zero was filmed, edited and produced in Gaza during 15 months of unfathomable destruction. Envisaged and overseen by renowned Palestinian director Rashid Masharawi (Curfew, Laila’s Birthday), From Ground Zero weaves together 22 shorts (three to seven minutes long each) made by 22 filmmakers, many of whom had no previous experience in the industry.“While trying to survive under the bombs, just like the other 2mn displaced Gazans, our brave directors managed to find time to make cinema,” says Masharawi of the film that became Palestine’s entry to the Academy Awards’ Best International Feature category and in December was named among the 15 best.Usually found behind the camera himself, Ramallah-based Masharawi took a back-seat role for From Ground Zero, allowing Gazans on the ground to shoot their own stories while he provided guidance from afar as artistic adviser and organiser. “I wanted them to tell untold stories on a very personal level, beyond the daily death counts and destruction we see in the news,” says Masharawi, who was born and raised in Gaza. “Across the films, the filmmakers are the storytellers, but they are also the stories themselves. I wanted them to show their lives and dreams. The movie is not a political commentary.”Ahmed Hassouna, director of the short film Sorry Cinema, says he never expected to become the subject of one of his own projects, “but I’ve become one of the countless stories of suffering.”An experienced filmmaker, he spent years directing a movie that was ruined by the war — hence the title of his short, which laments the creative loss. It also expresses his regret for the dire state of life in Gaza. “There is nothing here,” he says. “Almost no food. Everything we need to live is gone.”Interrupted by the sound of explosions in the background, Hassouna says that he no longer has the strength to make another film. “My life’s work is now to find food [and provisions] for my family. That’s the most important thing.” Beyond the obvious daily dangers of the war, the hardest aspect of filmmaking in Gaza throughout 2024 was the lack of electricity for phones, cameras, laptops and internet, says Masharawi. At times he lost contact with his directors for days on end. “Every time we got back online with them, we would hear news about loved ones being killed, or about them evacuating for the second or third time in a week.”Israel’s air and ground campaign has killed more than 46,600 Gazans, more than half of the identified victims women, children or older people, according to Gazan health authorities. Meanwhile, many parts of Gaza, especially in the north, have been on the brink of famine. The vast majority of From Ground Zero’s filmmakers have lost friends or family in the war.In some of the films, these personal disasters are explicit. While watching “Taxi Wanissa”, a fictional vignette that forebodingly follows a donkey-drawn taxi cart, a commonplace sight in Gaza due to the severe fuel shortages caused by the war, the screen abruptly cuts to black half way through. Following a pause, director Etimad Washah (an experienced filmmaker focused on women’s lives in Gaza) starts a piece to camera. Visibly distressed, she tells the audience that her brother and his young children were killed by an Israeli air strike, leaving her devastated and unable to finish the film which, poignantly, was meant to end with the taxi driver (Ahmed) being killed by an Israeli missile.Tragedy, however, is not the overarching theme of From Ground Zero. Through fiction, docu-fiction, documentary, animation and experimental cinema, the film presents a rich diversity of stories bound together more by hope and ingenuity than by sorrow.“I reject the despair, exasperation and ugliness [of war around me],” says one of the interviewees in No, which follows musicians from Sol Band, a Gazan group with an international following. “If we don’t stay [steadfast] and say ‘no’ to all of this, then you cannot have hope. We still want to sing, laugh, rejoice and express our emotions. Yes, there are missiles and destruction that take us down, but that only increases our challenge to overcome.”In No, the musicians sing and dance with children from their surrounding camp of makeshift tents, creating a daily music club for the displaced families. “Sometimes the children are sad, so it’s become our responsibility to play and sing. It makes them happy,” say the members of Sol Band who, just two months before the start of the war had returned to Gaza from Europe and elsewhere to record a new album.If the filming of From Ground Zero was the first seemingly impossible challenge, post-production was the next, says Masharawi. The endless buzzing of Israeli drones, patrolling Gaza’s skies 24 hours-a-day and heard in most of the films, was just one of many barriers. “We had to keep the drones’ noise because all of the films have, ultimately, what I call a ‘documentary atmosphere’ . . . So we couldn’t deny this sonic reality, but we also needed to edit things well for 5.1 surround sound that would be shown in world-class cinemas globally.”While the film screened at numerous international festivals, including Toronto, Amman and Taormina, as well as more than 100 US cinemas in January, it has also been shown in tents in Gaza for the filmmakers to share with friends and families. “With the Oscar shortlist, everybody is so proud. Some of them are even working on new projects for another upcoming [omnibus] film we’re doing from Gaza.”Masharawi entered From Ground Zero into last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where in the 1990s he received prizes for some of his earliest works, but his hopes were dashed. “It would have been a great occasion for the film, but to my great disappointment the festival told me that they did not want to deal with these tensions and sensitivities, despite the complete lack of political [discourse] in the film,” he says.Visibility has been paramount for Masharawi, who set up a protest screening in Cannes in a makeshift refugee tent that he erected near the red carpet of the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès.Despite this episode, Masharawi thinks that censorship against Palestinian filmmaking is, ultimately, a futile endeavour. “The Israeli military can kill tens of thousands of Palestinians, but it cannot occupy our history or our identity as expressed through art. For me, cinema is just dreaming and thinking. They cannot steal our dreams.”‘From Ground Zero’ is in cinemas and on streaming platforms in the US now and will be released in the UK and Europe in the spring, fromgroundzero.url.film
