TO GAZA

France | 2024 | 102 min | col.

One month from the anniversary of October 7, the day which dramatically upturned the situation in the Middle East, triggering a seemingly unstoppable spiral of violence, we have decided to screen a harrowing film that documents the war going on in the Gaza strip. It was filmed by the inhabitants of Gaza themselves with their phones in an act of citizens’ journalism that proves to be fundamental at a time in which official news coverage cannot keep up with the events. These Gazans have managed to capture the war since the Israeli attack, exhibiting the staggering violence under way and the resilience of the displaced. Narrated through the poems of Refaat Alareer, a poet who died under the Tzahal’s December 7 bombing, this chronicle of daily war describes the destruction, suffering, and survival in refugee camps from Gaza City to Rafah. For months, the filmmaker followed men, women, and children - some of whom are no longer with us - who risked their lives every day for this footage to travel so far. With their profound, disturbing violence, these images are like an electric shock, urging our consciences not to remain blind to what is happening, in the present and in the future. (l.f.)