AMMAN, Jordan — As Gaza remains engulfed in one of the most devastating conflicts in its modern history, Gaza-born Palestinian filmmaker Rashid Masharawi is focused on something both impossibly difficult and urgently necessary: storytelling.
The veteran director, best known for “Curfew” and “Ticket to Jerusalem,” is the force behind From Ground Zero and its expanded follow-up From Ground Zero+, initiatives aimed at helping emerging Palestinian filmmakers document life inside Gaza.
Several short films from the project have screened at this year’sAmman International Film Festival, which wraps July 10, offering audiences a deeply personal look at individual lives too often reduced to numbers.
“We were completely numbers — 100, 200, 1,000,” Masharawi says. “Part of this project is about turning those numbers into humans again. People with names, eyes, colors, dreams.”
Initially launched as a short-form workshop concept, From Ground Zero produced 22 shorts, each running between three and six minutes. The follow-up, From Ground Zero+, expands the format to include longer documentaries, up to an hour each, with 10 films in development. According to Masharawi, five are complete, and more are in production and post-production, with editing taking place in France.
“As long as the war continues, our cameras will continue,” he says. “We wanted these films to be cinema, not news. Personal stories, not just reactions.”
That distinction, between reactive documentation and intentional artistic creation, is crucial to Masharawi’s vision. Despite working remotely with a team of five assistants inside Gaza, he served as the artistic advisor and story mentor, ensuring the filmmakers had both structure and creative freedom.
“I left space for the filmmakers to express not only their feelings, but also their cinematic ideas,” he explains. “Some films are fiction, animation, video art, even marionette theater. Everything was open.”
Stories From Inside
The challenges of production were, as Masharawi notes, unlike anything faced in traditional filmmaking. Electricity was rare. Internet access often meant venturing into high-risk areas near hospitals and media tents, locations frequently targeted by Israeli airstrikes.
“We needed to move people, give them cameras, transport hard drives, and to talk, they had to go where there was Internet,” he says. “Those were the most dangerous places.”
Despite these constraints, the films that emerged are rich with humanity, loss and unexpected resilience. One four-minute short, “Jad and Natalie,” tells the story of a man mourning a lost love. The filmmaker, unsure his story was appropriate at such a moment, was encouraged by Masharawi to proceed.
“He was shy, but I told him, ‘This is exactly the story we need, something deeply human, far from the news,’” Masharawi recalls. “And it turned out to be a very beautiful film.”
Another, “Taxi Wanissa,” follows a man using a donkey-drawn cart as a taxi service after fuel supplies ran out. The filmmaker, Etimad Washah, was only two days into filming when tragedy struck. She lost her brother, his wife and their children in a bombing.
“She appears in the film and says, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t finish it,’” Masharawi recounts. “It’s the first time I’ve seen that in cinema — where the filmmaker tells you, on camera, why the film has to end.”
Some projects were never completed. “One filmmaker lost everything: his camera, his laptop, his house,” Masharawi says. “He was living in a tent. How could he go shoot?”
Festival Run and Global Reach
Despite the overwhelming odds, From Ground Zero has found remarkable success internationally. The collection has screened at more than 350 film festivals like Toronto, at Cannes in events organized in parallel to the festival, and it was shortlisted for the Oscars. In France, it’s had a theatrical release, and it has been shown at institutions including Unesco in Paris and the United Nations in New York.
“For me, it’s also about memory,” Masharawi says, “and about showing the people in Gaza that they’re not alone. Festivals, articles, audiences …. It means something. It matters.”
Above all, he believes in cinema as a form of cultural protection, a means to preserve identity, memory and humanity in the face of destruction.
“Cinema can carry feelings, thoughts, dreams,” he says with gravitas. “It becomes a land that no one can occupy.”
Looking Ahead
Asked what success might look like in 2035, Masharawi doesn’t speak in terms of box office or distribution deals. He speaks, instead, of permanence, of history remembered, of stories told.
“No war lasts forever. No occupation lasts forever,” he says. “Governments may win or lose battles. But people, the population, never lose. They are like trees, like sand, like the sea. You cannot win against nature.”
For now, From Ground Zero+ continues to grow, despite the circumstances. As long as there are stories to be told from Gaza, Masharawi will keep making space for them.
“This is not my film,” he says. “This is our film. I just give them the platform.”
variety.com
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