The Palestinian drama “All That’s Left of You,” directed by and starring actor/filmmaker Cherien Dabis, premiered at Sundance this 12 months to strong opinions and performed festivals from San Francisco to Sydney and, now, Karlovy Fluctuate. It nonetheless hasn’t introduced a U.S. distributor, and with its unflinching and emotional have a look at the context that explains the continued decimation of Gaza, that’s sadly unsurprising given the business’s timidity across the topic.
However the robust Karlovy Fluctuate viewers response buoyed hopes that this movie shall be seen extra extensively. Amid cries of “Free Palestine!” in the course of the prolonged applause for “All That’s Left of You” on the Czech Republic competition, Palestinian-American Dabis appeared probably the most moved. She waved at audiences within the balcony of the packed 1,131-seat Grand Corridor theater in Lodge Thermal, recognized for its therapeutic waters in a spa city that boasts greater than a dozen mineral springs, some freely accessible to the general public by faucets within the metropolis’s colonnades.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that this epic intergenerational drama’s optimistic reception was additionally therapeutic for the movie crew on a number of ranges. Greatest often known as the director of “Amreeka” and on collection like “Solely Murders within the Constructing” and “Ramy,” Dabis mentioned in an introduction, “At a time when Palestinian tales are being censored, suppressed, shadow-banned, ignored, erased, I’m so grateful to the Karlovy Fluctuate Worldwide Movie Pageant for highlighting and championing this movie.”
Throughout an IndieWire interview on the competition, Dabis mentioned her solid had flown in from locations just like the Israeli metropolis of Haifa, the Jordan capital of Amman, and New York. Three within the solid are the Bakris, precise relations consisting of father Mohammad (“The Night time Of”), and brothers Saleh (“The Blue Caftan”) and Adam (“Omar”). “But right here we’re, regardless of the percentages and overwhelming obstacles. We made it. And I need to say that with the horrific occasions of the previous couple of weeks, I actually didn’t know if we’d all make it right here,” Dabis mentioned.
Dabis started to consider her movie, which she calls the “Palestine origin story,” shortly after her lesser-known second movie, “Might within the Summer time,” got here out in 2013. She mentioned she didn’t really feel “mature sufficient” on the time to have a standpoint in regards to the story — till the pandemic, “when it simply flowed proper out of me as a result of I’d been sitting on it for thus lengthy.”
“All That’s Left of You” spans eight a long time, following the trials and generational trauma of a former middle-class household in Jaffa in 1948 by numerous infamous phases of Palestinian historical past, punctuated by occasions in 1978, the primary intifada (or “rebellion,” in Arabic) in 1988, and at last in 2022 in Tel Aviv.
Dabis performs Hanan, the gently decided spouse of Salim (Saleh Bakri); he’s the one character the movie tracks throughout its 74-year wing span. By the point we perceive how trauma can scar and embed itself throughout a household’s psyche, we additionally come to understand the slight misdirection underlying Dabis’ option to introduce Hanan simply after the opening credit wherein a teen character, Noor (Muhammad Abed Elrahman), seems to have been hit by a bullet throughout a protest within the West Financial institution.
Dabis, well-aged by way of make-up, has a slight tremor in her voice when she breaks the fourth wall within the movie and says, “You don’t know very a lot about us. It’s OK, I’m not right here in charge you. I’m right here to inform you who’s my son. However so that you can perceive, I need to inform you what occurred to his grandfather.” Whereas it’s revealed a lot later who her character Hanan is addressing, Dabis’ movie accomplishes a parallel objective: to enlighten the viewers in regards to the up to date origin of Palestine and supply a historical past lesson that brings us to the present warfare on Gaza.
“With this movie, I needed to inform the story of how Palestinians grew to become refugees, how a few of them ended up in exile, how slowly Palestinians have been thrown off their land, made to really feel like they needed to both depart or escape, and generally not allowed to return,” Dabis mentioned. “I don’t suppose folks know that story. I do suppose that that is the primary movie of its type to deal with [this history]. The construction was one of many first issues that got here to me. Given the output of Palestinian movies in the previous couple of years, we at the moment are seeing folks actually waking as much as what has been occurring and understanding that it’s very important. We’ve seen how Palestine has the power to impression the complete world proper now.”
In a current interview, Palestinian-Danish filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel, a good friend of Dabis whose narrative characteristic debut “To A Land Unknown” is now in U.S. theaters, took exception to the time period “refugee” being utilized to Palestinians, and insisted relatively that they’re folks “exiled from the world.” I requested Dabis whether or not she personally parses the phrases “refugee,” “exiled,” and “diaspora” in another way.
She mentioned, “My dad was exiled in 1967. He needed to get overseas citizenship so as to return to his homeland and simply go to his mother and father. He was not allowed to return ever to stay in Palestine. I noticed him handled as an outsider in his personal homeland. I consider my father as exiled and as type of a refugee. I’m Palestinian American, and I used to be the primary in my household to be born within the U.S., so I really feel a bit of bit extra part of that id, of that institution. I do and I don’t. I really feel very very like a first-generation hyphenated American, the place I don’t fairly slot in both place. I’m not fairly American sufficient for the People, and never fairly Arab sufficient once I go to the Arab world. So it’s like this in-between area. I all the time type of hated that rising up, however I’ve come to embrace it now as a result of I really feel it’s a perspective that’s considerably distinctive. At the least in my filmmaking, it permits me to essentially see two very completely different views.”
Dabis additionally shared the great challenges within the movie’s manufacturing, for the reason that timeline careened into the occasions that precipitated the warfare on Gaza. “We prepped the complete movie in Palestine for 5 months. We have been two weeks away from taking pictures when October 7 occurred. It grew to become fairly clear in a short time that the overseas crew needed to go away. They have been scared. I completely perceive. Then, it additionally grew to become very clear that we weren’t going to have the ability to shoot the movie there. It was turning into troublesome to maneuver round. Checkpoints have been closing, cities have been being sealed off within the West Financial institution. We have been listening to fighter jets, we have been feeling the bombs generally. It was scary. So we fled and went to Cyprus.”
She continued, “In a approach, the film did stay what any Palestinian lives. I discovered myself having to search for Palestine in every single place however Palestine as I looked for places yet again. I needed to begin from scratch. We needed to increase much more cash. We had so as to add months of prep yet again. We went to Cyprus. I discovered what I might there. We went to Jordan, shot the vast majority of the movie in Palestinian refugee camps within the north of Jordan, which was a really shifting expertise [as] we received to essentially work with Palestinian refugees on the bottom. Then, for the remainder of the film, we went to Greece, taking pictures the places [set in] the outdated metropolis of Jaffa and the Tel Aviv & Haifa places in Athens and on Rhodes Island.”
Regardless of the problem, which she certainly doesn’t want on another filmmaker, Dabis mentioned that the film “was actually a present for all of us who labored on it. To have the ability to create throughout a time of destruction, all of us felt it. To have the ability to simply pour our hearts and our grief into one thing collectively.”
Dabis, who’s Emmy-nominated for steering the “silent” episode on Hulu’s “Solely Murders within the Constructing,” mentioned her interval of TV directing between her second characteristic and “All That’s Left of You” made her a way more assured filmmaker, actor, and author, “as a result of I actually received to roll up my sleeves on a number of the exhibits I labored on, even assist from the script stage. I received actually fortunate to do some capsule episodes on ‘Ramy’ and ‘Solely Murders,’ [where] I received to deviate from the model of the present and do my very own factor, which will get you seen on tv.”
Casting for options, she mentioned, is an important job as a director, and that definitely was the case for “All That’s Left of You.” Fairly spectacular is the efficiency of the actor enjoying the youthful Noor (Sanad Alkaberete), who has an outburst in a pivotal second of the movie that finally ends up influencing his grandfather’s (Mohammad Bakri) and father’s (Saleh Bakri) generational responses to trauma.
Right here, Dabis couldn’t assist however gush. She mentioned, “I used to be relentless with my casting administrators. I simply saved saying no. They have been getting frightened. We have been 5 days away from taking pictures, and I nonetheless didn’t have younger Noor. They only stopped searching for child actors and put out an enormous name. And when I discovered him, I used to be identical to, that’s the child. It was simply discovering somebody who embodied the spirit of the character, a child who was so road good. He was such a bit of troublemaker, in probably the most endearing and charming approach. You could possibly see he had a spark of anger in him. He would go there. That was simply type of half the battle, after which actually making him really feel very secure on set to be himself. Working with him was like working with an grownup. When he was in, he was locked in. I imply, he was in a position to think about himself in these circumstances, and that was actually the principle factor, proper?”
Dabis grew to become audibly emotional once I requested her if she noticed her private biography as a diasporic filmmaker intertwining with a number of the characters’ trajectories. Dabis will need to have been 12 years outdated rising up in Ohio when the older Noor character within the movie participates fatefully within the first intifada within the West Financial institution. She mentioned, “Once I write, I’m all of the characters indirectly. The older Sharif [Bakri] is like my father. Hanan is part of me that I needed to discover, a component that’s religious and earthy and is the storyteller and needs to inform tales so as to heal. [Older] Noor is like that extra rebellious teenager, the one who’s indignant and needs the world’s consideration.”
She continued, “I didn’t stay the primary intifada, nevertheless it lived in me. Like the entire tales that I heard about Palestine rising up. We visited Palestine shortly after the primary intifada. I felt it in these visceral methods. I feel all of us have that rebellious spirit of anti-occupation. Like depart us alone, like get off of our land, like get the military out of our villages. I needed to discover the Palestinian longing, and lack of ability to let go, the ensuring that the subsequent generations all bear in mind Palestine. However I additionally needed to discover the technology of the characters who’re like, ‘Sufficient, sufficient! Let it go. That is killing us. This isn’t serving to us.’ I grew up with either side inside me and round me. I needed to signify the total spectrum of the Palestinian expertise on this movie.”
Dabis’ hope is that the movie, from its competition run and ultimately to theaters, turns into “mainstream. I’m so joyful that individuals are studying a lot from it. Somebody got here as much as me after the screening [in Karlovy Vary] and mentioned this movie reminded them of their very own mother and father in the course of the occupation of the Czech Republic in the course of the Second World Battle. I used to be like, wow. I hope this film could have many lives, starting with a theatrical launch, then a streaming launch, after which as an academic platform. That might be completely a dream.”
“All That’s Left of You” premiered at Sundance 2025 and performed Karlovy Fluctuate. It’s at the moment looking for U.S. distribution.
