A sprawling, gripping drama that starts with the foundation of the state of Israel and the displacement of Palestinian families in Jaffa, then ends two years shy of the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, Cherien Dabis’ All That’s Left of You considers generational trauma on both an intimate and epic scale. Following more than seven decades in the life of the Hammad family, orange-growers who were expelled from their land in Jaffa in 1948, the film is a gateway to understanding decades of Palestinian trauma borne of the immense Jewish trauma of the Holocaust. The film ultimately grows from anger into a call for reconciliation, with a moving ending that does not diminish either generational trauma but lands in a place of surprising nuance.
The film’s center is a peaceful yet rightfully angry family placed in an impossible situation: do they leave their ancestral land or stay and hope the better angels eventually prevail? Faith is tested at every turn when simple tasks (e.g. going out for medicine) can turn deadly in an occupied state where cruel, young IDF soldiers are free to dehumanize a man and his son. It’s a passage that perhaps is realistic but lacks the nuance the film builds toward.
The film opens in the West Bank circa 1988 as teen boy Noor (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) runs into a conflict, energized by his grandfather whose orange grove was seized by the new state of Israel in 1948 despite having worked with the mayor on a plan of surrender. Traumatized firsthand by an incident ten years earlier in which a cruel IDF soldier pointed a gun at his peaceful father, the teacher Salim (Saleh Bakri), and forced him to say the unspeakable about his wife, Noor grows to rebel against his elders. His participation in an uprising sets off events for Salim and his wife Hanan (writer/director Dabis) as they struggle to navigate a purposely frustrating bureaucratic process to transfer their son out of the West Bank and into a modern Israeli trauma hospital in Haifa where they find out they are too late.
Over the course of its nearly 150-minute runtime and 75-year span, the narrative unpacks the chain reaction of events that led to the shooting of Noor and his decision to run into the conflict. Raised by his grandfather and displaced from their beautiful family orchard, he grows to resent a father who is simply trying to protect his family. A boy in 1948, Salim is of a middle generation caring for his father who was imprisoned by the Israeli forces and still bears the psychological scars. Salim, too, escaped in the wake of shelling and bears the trauma of being separated from his father, who too-hastily sends his family to safety in an early, harrowing passage.
By nature, Salim is not a fighter but an intellectual from a young age. A sensitive boy who enjoys reading, he grows up to become a teacher. Both he and his father Sharif (played by Adam Bakri as a younger man) help their children pass the time with games, life lessons, and guidance as Sharif grows older with rage and regret. These moments remind me of a few moving short films in Palestine’s 2025 Oscars selection, the omnibus shorts program From Ground Zero, in which teachers help youth cope with the unthinkable reality in Gaza through art and distraction.
Beautifully lensed by Christopher Aoun, the film has the quality of both a sprawling saga, particularly in the 1948 passages which have the feeling and texture of a classical Hollywood epic, and an intimate drama as Salim and Hanan put aside their anger and trauma and seek spiritual guidance. While the film is not without a few missteps and uneven moments, All That’s Left of You, like Walter Salles’ brilliant I’m Still Here, uses its long arc to provide a sense of closure as Salim and Hanan reflect on their lives, circumstances, and ultimately what they believe is right and just. Ultimately they find solace in their exile, taking a different path from the elder Sharif (Mohammad Bakri as an older man) while still longing for what was.
Directed by Palestinian-American actress Dabis, All That’s Left of You is a powerful, emphatic drama that should resonate with global audiences as a film about internal conflict. The film is at its most powerful when the lens is trained on Salim and Hanan as they navigate 75 years of hoping for peace while contending with a burning anger, which in itself is both a radical and heartbreaking act.
All That’s Left of You premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.