As reality becomes more horrific, we start to question the value behind imagination. Since the beginning of the Israeli war on Gaza, the world has witnessed more atrocities than any of us can bear.

For more than 200 days, Palestinians in Gaza have experienced all kinds of suffering. Nearly 33,000 of Gaza’s people are killed. More than 60% of its construction is destroyed. 1.5 million people were forced to evacuate their homes and spend the night in tents, on the streets, or wherever they could find shelter.
As hospitals also have been blown up by the occupation forces, people have spent days and weeks trying to recognise and give bodies proper treatment.
The lucky ones in Gaza are those who found someone to bury them after they died. Many of their bodies decomposed, in the streets and under the rubble of their homes, which turned into an inferno while they slept, dreaming of a better tomorrow.
Gaza was an open prison, now it has become a mass grave.

What is happening in Gaza is challenging for Palestinians working in the cultural scene. Our social and cultural heritage, the history of our beautiful city, is systematically and deliberately being erased from existence by the destruction of cultural centers, educational institutions, and archaeological sites.
This war on culture is threatening our graphic and written history, and our civil records. As it already assassinated intellectuals and killed artists, slowly, by depriving them of treatment.
The cruelty of this scene to writers, artists, and filmmakers, especially those who knew Gaza before its destruction, aims to take away their right to tell their story. And the world should listen to their voices.

The responsibility falling on Palestinian intellectuals in general, and Gazans in particular, is more serious than ever before. Firstly, we must raise the level of our discourse when telling our narrative. Secondly, we need to help others speak with us, not on our behalf.
The space in which the Palestinian artist is allowed to work is no longer acceptable. Rather, it has become very narrow. What is happening in Gaza requires all of us to have more courage in refusing to work within predetermined spaces.

We already lost everything.

In this program, we present films in love with Gaza, a city that the occupation didn’t give the opportunity to talk about adequately, before wiping it out of existence. Our private and common history is being threatened by culturicide.
All five films were made in different periods of Palestinian cinema history. In its viewing order, we are taken on a short journey in and out of Gaza, and its diversity helps create a solid debate on the Palestinian question today.

This film selection and its panel discussion is prepared and edited by Gaza Film Unit, a collective of researchers, artists and filmmakers from Gaza, aims to protect the Palestinian narrative, documenting the genocide and building an archive.

Gaza Film Unit / Palestine Film Institute