Being a Palestinian under Israeli occupation will not help someone make a good film, according to Rashid Masharawi, but a good film-maker will help Palestine.

With his anthology film From Ground Zero (in Arabic: From Zero Distance) he attempts to do just that by bridging the space between the Palestinians in Gaza who have endured a campaign of annihilation behind closed doors to those around the world watching as a genocide unfolds in real time.

The result is a collection of 22 shorts by Palestinian film-makers, ranging from documentary to vignettes and animation, which turns our attention not only to the past – and to the unrelenting violence of the present, when the death toll in Gaza continues to climb – but also to the future and what cannot be taken.

“Cinema can protect memory an

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