A young woman, sat on the golden sands in front of azure waters, takes a pen and note pad. “I’m writing you a letter that I hope you will read while I’m still alive.” Anthology feature From Ground Zero could end there, with the opening seconds of Reema Mahmoud’s “Selfie,” and it would have transmitted its central theme – the seeming impossibility and existential terror of living in Gaza during the devastating siege and ethnic cleansing by Israeli forces. Yet there is so much more, so many more stories of hope and despair, loss and community, still to be told.
Selected by Palestine as its submission for the Best International Feature Oscar, it serves as a companion piece to this year’s other powerful feature, the Oscar-nominated No Other Land. That documentary, a Norwegian-Palestinian coproduction, arguably serves as a precursor to From Ground Zero in its portrayal of an earlier war crime in the same conflict: the destruction of the community of Masafer Yatta in 2022. In hindsight, that monstrous act was merely a warm-up to the deliberate obliteration of a whole region.
Aware that this is a film that needs to be seen by everyone, the filmmakers keep violence and bloodshed off-screen, even if it’s impossible to keep the worst horrors completely hidden. Instead, the emotional carnage is more than enough, but the brevity of each scene makes it impossible and unnecessary to look away. Whether it’s a straightforward interview to camera, a puppet show, or a paper animation, each story is an epic.
What unifies From Ground Zero as an anthology is not the location or the war. It’s the inherent question of how you would respond in the same circumstances. By juxtaposing 22 different voices – professional filmmakers and amateurs with a smartphone, tough guys and terrified teens, parents desperate for their kids and single people fearful they will never have a family – there is a Gazan refugee presented with whom anyone and everyone can identify. It’s not simply about watching the destruction of lives and buildings, but of dreams and aspirations, and From Ground Zero quietly demands your empathy.
The result may cause inner turmoil for the audience. It’s almost easier to watch the documentary segments because they are designed to capture absolute truth and so can be processed that way. When there is gunfire during a dramatic scene, it can take a second to remember that’s not foley or sound effects. That’s a real war. When characters walk through tent cities or across rubble, that’s not a set designed by an art director. It’s a real war zone.
Yet that debris forms a mosaic of resilience. Of course there is tragedy in watching men scraping spilled flour off dusty roads or children lining up for hours for a few dribbles of water. It’s caught in the tendrils of phone charger cables erupting from the one working power outlet, and echoes the constant buzzing of drones, day and night. Yet, at the same time, the very existence of From Ground Zero is a testament to hope, a theme made explicit in Hana Eleiwa’s short about the Sol Band, “No,” but present throughout the film. It’s in the award-winning filmmaker who has never seen a cinema shifting from drama to documentary. It’s the woman who refused to bring a beloved book with her when she evacuated because she plans to return home. It’s a young girl dancing on the beach. Gaza is all this.
This article appears in February 21 • 2025.
