Henry O'Brien
There’s always a push to make current events seem rooted only in their time and place and nothing else. The flattening effect creates a linear sense of history that obfuscates and suppresses the cultural and political context that came before it. While the conflict that started on Oct. 7, 2023, has led to thousands of deaths in Gaza (some estimates put it just over 64,000), the suffering Palestinians have faced from the Israeli military has been decades-long. With Hasan in Gaza, the latest from Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari (2024’s A Fadai Film) captures this by putting together footage from three MiniDV tapes of life in Gaza from 2001, which he recently rediscovered.
The documentary mostly depicts everyday life with local guide Hasan, who drives around Gaza and encounters citizens going about their normal routines, even as there are skirmishes and sounds of guns coming from the Israeli military. The result is a sobering experience; it lacks the urgency of Best Documentary Feature winner No Other Land, but remains haunting as viewers come in with the knowledge that the Gaza they see on screen is gone. The film is initially about Aljafari’s search for a man whose address he does not have.
The director first met this man, Abdel Rahim, when he was a teenager, imprisoned by the Israeli Occupation during the first Palestinian Intifada in 1989. So Aljafari, along with Hasan, drives around Gaza, looking to find this man. What starts as a search turns into a painful reminiscence of what life in the region used to be and what from this time has now been lost to time or, more terrifyingly, destroyed by this occupation.
The vibrancy of life on the street shines through With Hasan in Gaza. Children play on the beaches and excitedly ask to be on camera. People sell food on the streets and watch television from their homes. The quotidian aspects of Gazans’ lives humanize their lived experiences, not just merely making them victims of horrendous acts from Israel. The film’s opening narration details how the slaughter of Palestinians today is as inevitable as rain during a storm. But the actual footage of people living their lives is a form of resistance.
The scenes of Aljafari and Hasan driving on the highway and listening to songs place the viewer in Aljafari’s examination of memory. But as more direct acts of violence from the Israeli military appear later in the documentary, the memories, coupled with the knowledge of what has happened in Gaza since 2023, With Hasan in Gaza makes one wonder what from this footage is still around. Are the homes we see still standing? Or have they been reduced to rubble? Are the beaches full of life and children playing? Or are they abandoned as the surrounding areas are an active warzone?
The frustrations of citizens in Gaza can be felt, as interview subjects voice their righteous indignation at the loss of loved ones, proper living conditions and so much more. Possibly the most haunting aspect of With Hasan in Gaza is the fate of Hasan himself. It’s worth noting that, according to the film’s press notes, we do not know whether Hasan is alive. Aljafari, even through archive footage, manages to ask these pointed questions as the devastation increases in Gaza.
The documentary forces you to reflect on how much of what you have seen is now gone. Hasan may have become just another number in the death toll. Or he, like Gazans everywhere, is fighting to preserve their way of life that is slowly but surely being wiped out. Either choice should send shivers down a viewer’s spine and make one wonder will these people will ever regain what they had.
