It all started with a smile

In 2015, director Areeb Zuaiter came across photos and videos of a beach in Gaza through the internet. In the videos, young people perform acrobatic flips as an Israeli bomb detonates in the background. One of them smiles widely into the camera.

These young people are members of a Gazan parkour group, an extreme sport that combines climbing, gymnastics and jumping. The city is their training ground. Their daredevil exploits in the ruins of Gaza have earned them a degree of international fame in recent years. Back then, Zuaiter was impressed by the athletes' courage and their hunger for freedom. Last week, her documentary "Yalla Parkour" celebrated its European premiere at the Berlinale.

Since 2008, Gaza has been under a strict blockade by both Israel and Egypt. Leaving the Gaza Strip was possible only in exceptional cases, a situation that is particularly distressing for teenagers and young adults. The density of educational institutions and universities in the strip was impressive, but even with excellent grades or a scholarship from a top international university, leaving the Gaza Strip was impossible aside from a few isolated cases.

The film "Erasmus in Gaza", made in 2022 about an Italian medical student vividly illustrates this isolation. Gaza's young population—over 70 per cent are under 30 years old, almost half are children—look for ways to connect with the world: education and study, music or sports. All of these activities take place under extremely challenging conditions, yet with great enthusiasm, as demonstrated by the young men in the parkour group.

Memories of Gaza

In 2015, the situation in Gaza was far from rosy. The 2014 war, which lasted around 50 days, had just ended. Ruins from these past wars became a training ground for the parkour team, but one that was not without danger. Serious injuries were common. One member of the group fell from a high-rise building and survived with severe injuries; he had to wait a week for a permit to leave the country for treatment in Israel.

There is no question that Zuaiter admires the young men—there are no girls in the group—for their courage and athleticism. But there is another reason why she can't look away: the smiles of the parkour athletes remind her of her mother's smile in a faded photo from the beach in Gaza, taken when Zuaiter had travelled to Gaza with her mother for her uncle's wedding.

For the director, that trip was one of the rare moments that gave her a feeling of safety and of being at home. A feeling of "you are one of us, you belong here". Visiting Gaza as a four-year-old is one of her earliest memories—Zuaiter left her hometown of Nablus as a baby and has lived in the United States since 2010.

For Zuaiter, that smile represented not just security and courage but also the longing for an unreachable homeland.

In 2015, deep in a snowy American winter, Zuaiter began to make contact with Ahmed, a member of the parkour team. Ahmed is not the boy with the smile, who was a friend of the group who had already left the Gaza Strip. Ahmed posts the group's videos on social media. "Our videos are the only way the world can see us," he says in the film.

Filmed against a backdrop that no longer exists

A year and a half after 7 October, the Gaza Strip lies in ruins. Watching the images on screen, one inevitably wonders: is that house still standing? Is this person still alive?

"We wanted to show the reality in Gaza," the film's star Ahmed says in an interview with Qantara. "What has happened since October 7 has changed everything."

The places he trained with his parkour group have disappeared. According to the United Nations, 92 per cent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged by Israeli attacks. The neighbourhoods and memories of his childhood have been erased.

"Our house in Khan Yunis was destroyed. My brother is there, twelve years old, and all the schools are closed. There are no more universities, no real future. Life stands still, every day is the same struggle for survival, for access to food and clean water."

Ahmed managed to leave for Sweden in 2016; the film follows him there, too. There, the contact between the director and the protagonist developed into a friendship. In exile, Ahmed experiences the same feelings as Zuaiter: loneliness, the monotony of everyday life and the constant feeling that something is missing. He misses Gaza, his family and his mother, with whom he is only in contact via video call.

After seven years, he received Swedish citizenship and, overjoyed, returned for a short visit. "It feels like a dream that will never end," Ahmed wrote on Instagram. The post went live just a month before 7 October. He left the Gaza Strip before all hell broke loose, and the never-ending dream turned into a nightmare.

Premiered at Berlinale amid calls to boycott

Ahmed also has to navigate the same exhausting, polemical discussions that Zuaiter faces in the USA. Anyone who talks about Palestine can expect to be attacked or cancelled. Ahmed reports that since the most recent war, all his sponsors have dropped out. Reactions to the film at screenings in New York and Berlin however were emotional and very positive.

This is not a given, as we learned from the toxic debates after the Berlinale in 2024. Absurd accusations of antisemitism were made against the Jewish-Israeli director Yuval Abraham and his Palestinian colleague Basel Adranot, not just because of their harsh criticism of the Israeli occupation, but also because of their film, "No Other Land".

A documentary film, "No Other Land" provides concrete evidence of human rights violations by the Israeli occupation and has been highly praised for it. It won the 2024 Berlinale Documentary Film Award and is currently nominated for an Oscar. This year, under the new festival director Tricia Tuttle, the Berlinale declared in advance its desire to guarantee freedom of expression.

Nevertheless, in the run-up to the 2025 Berlinale, there were calls for a boycott; an alternative festival, the "Palinale", was also spontaneously organised. 

Zuaiter takes all this very seriously, but came to a different conclusion: "We decided, as a team, to participate. We believe that this story should reach as many people as possible, and the Berlinale remains an important place for that."

This is especially true now, while Donald Trump makes grotesque proposals to turn Gaza into a holiday destination free from Palestinians. "When we see the film now, we get very, very emotional." Zuaiter says. "Because it's the last time we'll see Gaza as it was."

"But we believe that Gaza will remain. That there is a future. Gaza was alive, and people kept it alive despite all the difficulties. And they will continue to live there, despite everything."

This is an edited translation of the German original. Translated by Louise East.