REVIEW: From Ground Zero (2024) dir. various

One of the most terrifying things ever filmed takes place in one of the 22 shorts featured by Palestinian directors from and about Gaza in the wartime anthology From Ground Zero. I could name any number of the horrifying images I witnessed, and perhaps the next reviewer will highlight another one of these cinematic ghosts of genocide captured in real time. Heartbreakingly awful images are abundant in a collection of shorts about the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, after all. As far as I’m concerned, there can be nothing worse, nothing grimmer, than a young girl who should be in elementary school and her younger brother discussing the twisted reality of their mother writing their names on each of their four limbs so that, should the Israeli military blow them up, they can be reassembled for a proper funeral. This is the reality of what’s happening in Gaza.

One feature of Palestinian cinema is the undeniable elephant of the never-ending nakba. (An Arabic word for “catastrophe” that refers to the violent ethnic cleansing of Palestine that began in 1948). Israeli cinema — the cinema of the occupiers — has the luxury of thematic and subject variation. Their films can, and often do, have nothing to do with the conflict. Unlike almost any other regional cinema industry in the world, Palestinian cinema has one subject — occupation and freedom — sung by filmmakers using different notes. And the anthology of From Ground Zero sings those notes with hearty throats and impressive range.

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