Journey into Gaza

In Gaza, you have to arrive in the evening in spring, lock yourself in your room and listen to the sounds coming in through the open windows….
We are in 2018. I’m 25 years old and a foreign traveler. 
I meet some young Palestinians of my age.

Assembled from old images just before the Hamas attacks on 7th October and the counterattacks by the Israeli army, Piero Usberti’s story makes no claim of neutrality: the filmmaker’s encounters with the Gazans of course shape his vision. But his point of view remains that of a foreigner who transforms his distance from the situation into a strength. He invites us to start again from the beginning, laying out the basic data constitutive of Gaza: the Naqba, the state of siege, the lack of jobs and electricity, the instrumentalization of terrorism in order to subjugate an entire people, the weight of traditions. While Piero Usberti denounces Israel’s violence against the Palestinian civil population and the deprivation of their rights, what primarily emerges during his journey are universal aspirations, which the region’s specific situation only exacerbates. Going against the tide of media reports and their broad generalisations, the film shows a series of encounters with young people whose singularity he deftly highlights: Sara, an aid worker, Mohanad, a committed communist, Jumana, an aspiring lawyer… The sensitive yet non-emphatic narration guiding the story always returns to the narrator’s emotion, one modest human amongst other humans. By this yardstick, what emerges with the utmost clarity is an undeniable truth, albeit one that is too easily obliterated: the respect due to every human life.

Olivia Cooper-Hadjian