Real Films

GAZA brings us into a unique place beyond the reach of television news reports to reveal a world rich with eloquent and resilient characters, offering us a cinematic and enriching portrait of a people attempting to lead meaningful lives against the rubble of perennial conflict. Throughout its entire history the Gaza Strip has been witness to conflict and upheaval. From ancient times this tiny coastal territory, located at a crossroads between continents, has been a pawn whose fate rested in the hands of powerful neighbours.

A man alone in an empty house somewhere in the Solagne region of France. Despite the pleasent light of spring, the man is prey to anguished thoughts : a brewing storm, the blood of two children, a face glimpsed behind a windowpane, sleepless nights spent waiting for the dawn. The man is Vincet Delaune, a famous novelist. But he is having a hard time finisshing his latedt book. A stone's throw from his house, two little girls were killed. In spite of Vincent's disgust at the crime, he is irresistably drawn to the little abandoned train station where the bodies of the twins were found...

The Sabra and Shatila quarters are part of the Lebanese capital Beirut, which was rocked by a violent explosion in 2020, plunging Lebanon into the worst economic crisis in its history. In the poor districts, once provisionally built for Palestinian refugees, the residents live at a subsistence level without papers, without civil rights, without prospects. The documentary weaves the stories of the three families Kujeyje, Daher, Abeed and that of the young father Aboodi Ziani into a searing portrait of life in a city on the brink. The filmmakers accompanied their protagonists over a four-year period between 2018 and 2022 and show how the poorest of the poor firsthand felt the consequences of the gigantic port explosion, Lebanon's historic economic crisis, the corona pandemic and the ever-growing refugee quota. But unmistakable qualities like resilience and hope allow them to survive.