A film not to forget a history canceled
It is a very special meeting. After Gaza, my lovePresented in 2020 at the Venice exhibition, the new film by Tarzan and Arab Nasser, the Gemelli brothers, Palestinian directors of Gaza today installed in France, tells the story of three characters. A young man who tries to build a life, his friends of friends for whom he is traffic and a police officer from Gazaouite who tries to make a career. A police and a dramatic comedy, whose darkness colors his social chronicle with a healthy humor.
It is a special and short meeting and for which the directors have decided to express themselves in Arabic. For that? Because today, while the war and the genocidal acts made in Gaza by Israel since the attacks perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023 are more than ever furious, it is an identity, a story, a collective existence in serious danger you want to defend.
A unique movie
Once upon a time in Gaza It is a movie like any other. A police thriller whose drama is that of a young man, Yahya (Nader Abd Alhay), who simply wants to be able to leave Gaza to study in the West Bank and survives possible while waiting for this opportunity that does not arrive. During this wait, in vain, the adventures are multiplying to Yahya. But this movie is not even like any other movie. There is really a miraculous form or a form of aberration. How, when the development of Gaza has been blocked for a long time as a company and is currently experiencing a situation that no word can district, not being terribly moved to discover a real fiction, an artistic gesture that is due to its aspect of the entertainment only of political testimonies?
The Nasser Brothers are almost unrecognizable from each other as physically similar: imposing stature, short beards and long black hair, green eyes blackened by the makeup. On one of the luxurious cannes beaches in which interviews are organized, in the privileged picture of the Cannes Film Festival, they do not wish to speak so much about the details of their film as of its political sphere and of what they hope that the public attracts in the reality of our world. The following comments belong entirely to them, collected as pronounced.
What is the starting point Once upon a time in GazaAnd why did you choose to place this story in 2007?
Arabic Nasser : We worked on this scenario for ten years. From the beginning, his name was Once upon a time in Gaza. The film speaks of a very sensitive period, but the entire story of Gaza is very sensitive. We chose 2007, because at that moment Israel officially announced that Gaza was an enemy entity and that they built the wall they boasted of all over the world. The main character, Yahya, grew up in the 2000s. In reality, it was a generation that knew the 2006 war, that of 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2014, 2021, 2022 and the second at the end of 2022 and finally the genocide that is currently underway. What we can expect from this generation, which has known all these wars and all these locations. The world asks questions on 7 October 2023, but nobody is asking the question of 7 October. The story did not begin on October 7th.
However, your film is not a documentary and its topic is not directly political.
Arabic Nasser : I challenge you to find a Palestian story that is not a millimeter close to a political story. Our cinema is that of Gaza and everything in Gaza is political. Enter a kitchen, you want to prepare a sandwich, there is politics. The way in which the population of Gaza lives their daily life is political. Politics strictly determines everything about the life of Gaza. If Israel had allowed Yahya, this generation, to leave the Gaza strip, the scenario would have been very different. He would have had a future, another life in front of him. But he is in prison in Gaza, as are the two million of his inhabitants. It is a form of genocide. There are two weights two measures. Why don’t Israel authorize Israel to defend itself allows the population of Gaza?
Is your movie the story of this tragedy?
Tarzan Nasser : It is not a tragedy. The assaults, the previous wars are perhaps tragedies. Today it is a genocide, purely and simply.
Because you have chosen this title, Once upon a time…, who writes your film in a long tradition of fiction, both literary and cinematographic?
Arabic Nasser : We wanted to use this expression in the literal sense. Once upon a time …This is the story of a revision, something that no longer exists. You can talk about a road, a beach and suddenly a shell and four young people die, disappear. Not everything remains, everything is eliminated, there are no traces. Once upon a time …It is therefore the disappearance of Gaza. Everything was shaved from north to south. All the means of life, the whole infrastructure, for the sewers, were destroyed. For example, if you go to the footage scene of Once upon a time in the WestThere are traces preserved, details that still exist, the memory is alive. But from Gaza, everything has disappeared. Our film shows the life of the population of Gaza and today for three quarters of this population, their whole life has disappeared.
What is your feeling of being present in Cannes to present Once upon a time in Gaza ?
Arabic Nasser : It is a dream that any director is present in such a festival, with this immense public, all this audience from all over the world to discover cinema. For us, like Palestinian directors, it is very important because we can show our stories and demonstrate that as a human being we deserve a better life, we deserve to have rights. This is the most important for us, in this Cannes film festival which is the largest of the festivals.
Source: Cine Serie
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