Film From Ground Zero - Gaza

From Ground Zero - Gaza is the film that will be presented in November 2024 at the Med Film Festival and the Torino Film Festival, after having been screened in Toronto.  It is a collection of 22 short films, some very short, that make up a 1h 55' film: the filmmakers are girls and boys from the Gaza Strip, aged between 19 and 28, some of them students of the film school organized by the Masharawi Foundation in Palestine. Some of the short films are conceived in both documentary and narrative forms, showing daily life in the huge tent city formed by more than a million people displaced from the smoking rubble of Gaza City. The work highlights the contingent situation and state of mind of an entire people.

The genres explored range from fiction to documentary to animation: tutors based in the Middle East and Europe supervised the projects, while experienced coordinators on the ground in Gaza provided the technical and human resources needed for filming.  

Among the short films is Reema Mahmoud's Selfie: a USB stick and a letter sealed in a bottle and thrown into the sea mark one woman's attempt not to get lost in the shuffle of war. No Signal by Muhammad Al Sharif: a man tries to rescue his brother from under the rubble, and their and their conversation is shrouded in uncertainty, as they suffer from a lack of help, with a long waiting list of families in similar situations, delaying the delaying the intervention of civil defense forces.

The film is an Oscar nominee representing Palestine on Italian soil.