Palestinian-American filmmaker Cherien Dabis was in the West Bank, preparing to shoot her deeply personal drama All That’s Left Of You, when the events of October 7, 2023, forced her to rethink everything. “We were forced to evacuate… It was devastating to leave our Palestinian crew behind,” Dabis recalled, emphasizing the emotional toll of abandoning a team that was eager to work on what was seen as a historic film.
All That’s Left Of You, one of two Palestinian films premiering at this year’s Sundance Festival, tells the story of three generations of a family displaced from Jaffa in 1948, forced to live in the West Bank. With a production budget of $5-8 million, it is a rare major Palestinian-centered feature making a high-profile debut in the West.
“It’s really hard to make any film, but particularly a Palestinian film,” said Dabis. “Raising money is difficult… people are often hesitant to support these stories.” The film spans decades, from 1948 to the present day, and mixes intimate family drama with sweeping historical events. Dabis also stars in the film as a mother faced with an impossible choice when her son is injured during the 1988 First Intifada.
Many of the film’s emotional moments are based on Dabis’s own family’s experiences. In one harrowing scene, a father is humiliated by Israeli soldiers in front of his young son, a moment that fractures their bond forever. Dabis, who frequently visited the West Bank as a child, shared her own memories of seeing her father face humiliation at a checkpoint. “I thought they were going to kill him,” she said.
Though deeply personal, the film’s subject matter is bound to spark political debate. Dabis insists that the film is not overtly political but acknowledges that Palestinian stories inevitably intersect with the region’s fraught political landscape. “We can’t tell our stories without addressing political questions,” she told AFP. “We should be able to share our personal and family experiences without fear of backlash.”
The film’s production was disrupted in October 2023 when violence erupted following a Hamas attack on Israel. Forced to flee, Dabis and her team completed the film using locations in Jordan, Cyprus, and Greece to stand in for their homeland. “I’m still shocked we finished the film,” Dabis said at its premiere, though it currently lacks a theatrical distributor.
Another film making waves at Sundance is Coexistence My Ass!, a documentary following Jewish peace activist-turned-comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi as she grapples with the consequences of Israel’s military actions while creating a one-woman show. “As an activist, I reached 20 people, and in a viral video mocking dictators, I reached 20 million people,” she said, expressing anxiety about how the film will be received.
Earlier this week, No Other Land, a documentary produced by a Palestinian-Israeli activist collective, earned an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature. However, it remains without a US distributor. Director Amber Fares believes the film industry must recognize the demand for such stories. “People want to see these films,” she said.
Dabis concluded, “There’s been a shift in recent years. People are beginning to realize that our stories have been missing from the mainstream narrative.”
