Palestinian identity on screen

"I'm here to tell you who my son is. But for you to understand, I must tell you what happened to his grandfather". An old woman speaks these words into the camera. When, where and to whom we will not find out until the end of the film.

Until then, the film follows the story of a Palestinian family from the 1948 Nakba onwards. The narrator, Hanan, does not proceed in a strictly chronological order, but moves between several points in time.  

From 1988, when Hanan’s teenage son Noor is critically injured during an anti-Israel demonstration in the West Bank, the story shifts back to Jaffa in 1948, to show how Hanan's father-in-law, Sharif, was forced from his villa and his beloved orange groves. 

Displacement, war and imprisonment push the family into the West Bank, and Sharif's son—Hanan's husband, Salim—grows up, like his own son Noor later would, hearing stories of a homeland he never truly knew.

The Israeli occupation is depicted in stark terms. As a child, Noor watches as his father, Salim, is humiliated by Israeli soldiers living out their power fantasies and pointing their rifles at him. 

The experience awakens a fury that, during the First Intifada in the late 1980s, drives the teenage Noor onto the streets, where he becomes a victim of Israeli violence himself. This becomes the starting point of the mother's account, and of the film.

From the diaspora to Palestine and back

Cherien Dabis’s epic draws inspiration from classic Egyptian melodramas. The emotions run high, the runtime is a generous 145 minutes. Her multigenerational family saga is moving and affecting while engaging with essential themes: occupation, transgenerational trauma, diaspora, and the hope of returning home.

Dabis, born in 1976 in Omaha in the US state of Nebraska, is herself part of the global Palestinian diaspora. As she has recounted in interviews, on her first visit to Israel at the age of eight, she was detained for 12 hours at the Israeli border and subject to a full-body search. That "first contact" was more than enough—she didn't return to Palestine until 20 years later.

Her first two feature films each conveyed an outsider's perspective. "Amreeka" (2009) told the story of a Palestinian woman in the USA; her follow-up film, "May in the Summer" (2013), dealt with the experiences of an American woman in the Middle East. In the US, Dabis experienced numerous fears and prejudices, threats and insults as an Arab woman, an experience that "All That's Left of You" also responds to.

With this film, Dabis aims to counteract the false portrayal and representation of Palestinians, which emphasises fanaticism, violence and backwardness. At the beginning of the film, she contrasts these stereotypes with the atmosphere among the cultivated, intellectual milieu at her grandfather's villa in Jaffa. At the dinner table, young and old alike quote Arabic poetry, and the entire film is imbued with familial love and solidarity.   

Growing interest in Palestinian cinema

Like Dabis, many Palestinian auteur filmmakers strive to present a realistic and nuanced portrayal of Palestinian identity and experience, for which many have achieved international recognition. Rashid Masharawi, for example, has spent decades capturing everyday Palestinian life as authentically as possible. His most recent project, "From Ground Zero" (2024), brings together 22 short films made in Gaza.

Paris-based filmmaker Elia Suleiman approaches exile and occupation with poetic irony, while May Masri has been documenting life under occupation and in Lebanese refugee camps since the 1980s.

Other filmmakers take a more intellectual, postmodern approach to Palestinian identity, interrogating image archives, historical narratives and personal memory—for instance, Kamal Aljafari, whose "With Hasan in Gaza" (2025) recently had its German premiere at the Duisburg Film Festival.

In his documentaries, Denmark-based Mahdi Fleifel focuses on the movements and migrations of the global diaspora. Similar themes are explored in his latest drama "To a Land Unknown" (2025), which follows two young refugees stranded in Athens as they try to make their way to Berlin (released on 27 November).

Faced with surreal conditions of artificial borders, walled villages, and a homeland that exists only virtually, in memories and utopias, Palestinian filmmakers have also increasingly turned to science fiction and fantasy as tools to explore their situation.

Western filmmakers have felt committed to the Palestinian cause since Jean-Luc Godard, whose early films were highly partisan. And not least, Israeli filmmakers have also told Palestinian stories, for example, the feature films of Eran Riklis, or the award-winning documentary "No Other Land" (2024), co-directed by Yuval Abraham and his Palestinian colleague Basel Adra.

One thing is clear: cinema is essential for the construction, development and self-examination of Palestinian identity.

With an international audience in mind

The unique feature of "All That's Left Of You" is that Cherien Dabis frames her film as a heartfelt family saga aimed at a broader international audience.

She cast Mohammad Bakri, the charismatic star of Palestinian cinema, as Sharif, and his sons, Adam and Saleh, also appear in the film. Dabis herself carries us through the decades of the story in the role of Noor’s mother, Hanan.

Originally, the film was meant to be shot in Palestine, but the Gaza war forced the crew to evacuate two weeks before filming was due to begin, and production was relocated to Cyprus, Greece and Jordan.

In the end, securing a distributor in the United States proved difficult. Films from and about the Middle East seem to raise fears of controversy and scandal. Yet internationally, Dabis’ film has won numerous awards, including several highly coveted audience prizes. Clearly, it has captured hearts.

Speaking of hearts: at one point in the film (here’s a mild spoiler) we learn that Noor has been taken into intensive care after a demonstration in the West Bank and will not survive. His parents must decide whether to donate his organs—to save other lives, possibly even Israeli lives.

This act of generosity and self-transcendence recalls Marcus Vetter's documentary "The Heart of Jenin" (2008), in which a father donates the organs of his 11-year-old son, who was accidentally killed by Israeli soldiers.

The father's reasoning, that this act can break the cycle of hatred and violence, is shared by Noor's parents in "All That's Left of You". How many times must trauma and history repeat themselves?

This is an edited translation of the German original. Translated by Max Graef Lakin.