FROM GROUND ZERO – Review by Jennifer Green
People searching for family members under rubble. A man buried and rescued three different times in one 24-hour period. A boy attending “school,” alone with a book by his teacher’s makeshift grave. Children explaining why their parents have marked their limbs with their names in ink. An aspiring filmmaker chopping up his clapboard for firewood. A man sleeping in a body bag.
These are just some of the emotionally charged scenes to be found in the 22 short films that comprise From Ground Zero, Palestine’s entry for this year’s International Oscar. The films were entirely shot on the ground in Gaza during the war. Some are more professional than others, but all are moving.
The fact that this film even exists seems miraculous, with the war ongoing and sporadic electricity and internet connections. The idea was to offer artists a means and a voice to document daily life, but also to create art and express themselves. Even in a war zone, life goes on. People hold onto hope, they find moments of joy, they connect and help each other. They think about a better future.
The film opens on one of the seven short films made by women. In Selfie, a young woman writes a letter to an anonymous friend, detailing the destruction she sees around her and describing what she misses about her “old life,” including dressing up and feeling feminine. She says she was living “a beautiful life in a beautiful city.” At the end of the short, she stuffs the letter in a bottle, together with a thumb drive showing footage from her pre-war life.
It’s an excellent choice as the opening film, not just because the woman’s first-hand story is compelling, but because the entire film is a kind of “message in a bottle,” sent out from a war zone to anyone who finds it or watches.
The next several films threaten to overwhelm the viewer with stories of destruction and death. That momentum is broken by Everything is Fine, about a man who continues to perform his stand-up comedy routines for refugees in camps. This is followed by several films focused on children making art to process what they’re living through.
In the middle section, stories get heavier again. People describe losses. One especially affecting film, among the shortest in the collection, is a tearful young man recounting the death of his soon-to-be-fiancée. In another, a former rising star in a university art program discusses her pieces, now sitting dusty in a bombed-out apartment.
Another particularly memorable short starts out following a “taxi” driver around, then ends abruptly with the female director appearing on screen to explain that the protagonist of the film had been killed in a bombing, as had some of her own relatives, and that she didn’t have the wherewithal to complete the movie.
The film is not objective, nor is it meant to be. It aims to humanize, to empathize, to go beyond the headlines and geopolitics. It aims to convey the hopes and dreams of everyday people, which persist even in dire circumstances. In this way, the shorts are potentially relatable to any viewer. But even with glimmers of hope sprinkled throughout thanks to some clever editing, the aggregate is no easy watch.
