There’s an unintended irony in the title of Cherien Dabis ’s Oscar entry, a decades-spanning saga involving three generations of a Palestinian family, starting with their displacement by the Israelis in 1948.

“We’d intended to shoot the film in Palestine,” said Dabis, speaking at Deadline’s Contenders Film: International event. “In fact, I landed in Palestine in May of 2023 and began prepping the film with my crew on the ground there. I spent almost five months there. We were two weeks away from shooting when the events of October 2023 stopped us in our tracks and forced us to flee and essentially evacuate. Of course, we had no idea that the situation would just escalate and escalate, and we were never able to return.”

With its locations all but destroyed, the production was forced to

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