From Ground Zero is a film that, in an ideal world, would not exist, and cannot be written about as if it were a normal production. This anthology of 22 shorts is Palestine’s submission for the Best International Film Oscar and has deservedly made the 15-title shortlist. Like any anthology film, it suffers from certain pieces being better-realized than others, though it’s difficult to critique this in all good conscience; when making art in a war zone, there’s an inherent urgency that outweighs dramatic shortcomings. As the title reminds us, these are dispatches from a living hell unfathomable to any viewer, and the fact that several filmmakers have been able to keep creating under such circumstances is a miracle––one anybody with a heart would trade for both an end to the bloodshed and these directors being able to create art on their own terms.
This might be why the short that resonated with me most was Ahmad Hassunah’s Sorry Cinema, a first-person documentary account of the challenges to create and distribute art whilst living under occupation. Hassunah narrates his experiences making the 2019 feature Istrupya, a tense thriller based on a true story wherein young Palestinians risked their lives to escape to Egypt on a smuggling boat. It was a film with local relevance and unable to be screened in a country that doesn’t have a single cinema; the director’s frustration that it went on to be shown at international festivals he couldn’t attend is one which I can only imagine was sustained with this segment. His voice made it to one of the world’s most feted festivals––it had a North American premiere at TIFF in September––but, under the current circumstances, neither he nor any of its creatives will be able to see it as intended. It’s a brief apology to the very medium for not continuing to dedicate his life to it under the conditions of genocide; the questions it raises have wider-reaching implications than may initially be assumed.
Sorry Cinema is a vital interjection into proceedings early on, smartly recontextualizing every short as being made with international viewers as its primary focus, offering human perspectives on life in a war zone that get lost beneath depressing headlines. This is most evident in the narrative shorts, which typically lean more towards sentimentality––e.g. School Day, Ahmed Al-Danf’s brief-but-powerful tale of a young boy who still makes the daily journey to his classroom despite the conflict. It’s easy to write this off from the inevitability of its conclusion, but proves an effective tear-jerker for its informed perspective. Long before the current ground invasion, Palestine was widely reported as having one of the world’s youngest populations––an unashamedly emotional tale is doubly effective when it horrifyingly represents a new normal.
All these shorts offer sobering glances at life during wartime, but this isn’t a film marked by hopelessness, nor is it one that could be cheaply written-off as depicting triumphs of the human spirit. Some of the more incisive pieces deal directly with that struggle to maintain optimism in the face of despair: documentarian Hana Awad’s No finds a brief reprieve via musical performance, while Nidal Damo’s Everything Is Fine follows another individual (a stand-up comedian traveling to a performance in a refugee camp) reckoning with the necessity of their art. The latter ends before any moment of uplift can be achieved but highlights how many are dedicating their lives to coercing fleeting moments of joy out of misery.
Of the 22 here, Ahmad Hassunah is the only filmmaker who boasted prior directing credits, yet there’s something to commend about how each aspiring auteur adapted to the project brief. There are short animations, docudramas told via marionettes, and even more experimental artworks, all created under the harshest conditions possible; in such sense it’s a Five Obstructions-level triumph, a gallery of creatives using the minimal equipment at their disposal to widen global perspectives on life in Palestine. If this is a project defined by life in a warzone, that very fact offers some solace for the future––at November’s London Palestine Film Festival, one of the film’s producers remarked that all credited directors are still alive. There will hopefully be one day soon where we can see what their boundless creativity might achieve when not constrained by appalling circumstances.
From Ground Zero opens in theaters on Friday, January 3.