Film, Film Review

REVIEW: From Ground Zero (2024) dir. various

Now playing @ West Newton

by

One of the most terrifying things ever filmed takes place in one of the 22 shorts featured by Palestinian directors from and about Gaza in the wartime anthology From Ground Zero. I could name any number of the horrifying images I witnessed, and perhaps the next reviewer will highlight another one of these cinematic ghosts of genocide captured in real time. Heartbreakingly awful images are abundant in a collection of shorts about the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, after all. As far as I’m concerned, there can be nothing worse, nothing grimmer, than a young girl who should be in elementary school and her younger brother discussing the twisted reality of their mother writing their names on each of their four limbs so that, should the Israeli military blow them up, they can be reassembled for a proper funeral. This is the reality of what’s happening in Gaza.

One feature of Palestinian cinema is the undeniable elephant of the never-ending nakba. (An Arabic word for “catastrophe” that refers to the violent ethnic cleansing of Palestine that began in 1948). Israeli cinema — the cinema of the occupiers — has the luxury of thematic and subject variation. Their films can, and often do, have nothing to do with the conflict. Unlike almost any other regional cinema industry in the world, Palestinian cinema has one subject — occupation and freedom — sung by filmmakers using different notes. And the anthology of From Ground Zero sings those notes with hearty throats and impressive range. 

“Selfie,” the first short, is over seven minutes and introduces both the despair and hope of Gaza through the eyes of a young woman. The rest of the shorts range from three to six minutes and most of them are documentary in form if not also in genre. The scripted dramas in the collection are honestly difficult to discern from the documentaries given the incredulity of horror present in Gaza and the unified subject material, except when they enter into formally non-verisimilar territory like animation and puppetry. The genocidal violence erases distinguishable artistic genres. 

The shorts take different approaches to the subject material; sometimes they observe journalistically, “from ground zero” as it were, such as Islam El Zerieior’s grab-it-and-go bag in “Flashback” or Tamer Nijim’s roaming (former) teacher in “The Teacher.” Other times they poetically reflect on loss and tragedy like the resilient humor of a comedian in Nidil Damo’s “All Is Fine” or the optimistic anthemic music video set on the beach titled “Charm” by Bashar Al-Balbeisi. (My Arabic is limited to pleasantries and Islamic studies vocabulary, so I was disappointed that the version I watched didn’t translate the song lyrics, though the performance still proved rousing.) Many unexpectedly peer through the blood and death to reject despair, as the student who refuses to bring a book about the 1948 nakba because the family never returned to their home in Ala’a Islam Ayoub’s “Overburden.” Others even dare to find glimmers of hope. “Out of Frame” from Neda’a Abu Hasna does this most effectively with the artist that Abu Hasna follows, Ranin Al Zeriei, finding her own art with a hopeful message still intact under the rubble.

For a film where it is impossible to be confident that everyone who helped make this film is still alive, From Ground Zero is impossibly hopeful and inevitably meaningful.

From Ground Zero
2024
dir. Aws Al-Banna, Ahmed Al-Danf, Basil Al-Maqousi, Mustafa Al-Nabih, Muhammad Alshareef, Ala Ayob, Bashar Al Balbisi, Alaa Damo, Awad Hana, Ahmad Hassunah, Mustafa Kallab, Satoum Kareem, Mahdi Karera, Rabab Khamees, Khamees Masharawi, Wissam Moussa, Tamer Najm, Abu Hasna Nidaa, Damo Nidal, Mahmoud Reema, Etimad Weshah, & Islam Al Zrieai
115 min.

Now playing @ West Newton Cinema

Joshua Polanski is a freelance film and culture writer who writes regularly for the Boston Hassle and In Review Online. He has contributed to the Bay Area Reporter, Off Screen, and DMovies amongst other places. His interests include the technical elements of filmmaking & exhibition, slow & digital cinemas, cinematic sexuality, as well as Eastern and Northern European, East Asian, & Middle Eastern film.

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