With Hasan in Gaza by Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari, a portrait of a Gaza Strip that no longer exists, is the Opening Film of the 66th edition of the Festival dei Popoli, scheduled for Monday 3 November at 8.30 pm at the Cinema La Compagnia in Florence, in the presence of the author.
The film begins as a search for a former fellow prisoner from 1989 and becomes an unexpected journey from north to south Gaza with Hasan, a local guide. The camera moves through the streets and local landscapes, recording fleeting moments of everyday life, faces and fragments of a reality that has now been irreversibly altered. Over twenty years later, the director rediscovers some old MiniDV tapes containing evidence of a place and a time that no longer exist, in order to compose "a tribute to Gaza and its people, to everything that has been erased and that has come back to my mind at this crucial moment in Palestinian existence, or non-existence. It is a film about catastrophe and the poetry that resists. This is my first film that I never made'. (Kamal Aljafari)
'We thought long and hard about the right way to open the event, aware that while a festival is also a celebration, the atrocities we have all witnessed in recent months require us to take a stand that is also a declaration of intent. We believe that Kamal Aljafari's film is a filmed document of absolute relevance in understanding the ongoing genocide, the devastation of a world that is being progressively razed to the ground, and the value of images that claim the persistence of a humanity that cannot be erased in any way.
Opening the 66th edition with With Hasan in Gaza means affirming the political role of documentary cinema and those who make it, as well as that of a festival whose entire programme, as a whole, focuses attention on the crisis in the global socio-political scenario, starting with the increasingly urgent dimension of a tragedy that cannot leave us indifferent'. (A. Stellino, artistic director)
The documentary will premiere in Italy in the International Feature Film Competition of the 66th Festival dei Popoli after participating in the Locarno Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. Kamal Aljafari, Palestinian director and artist, now lives in Berlin. His films investigate and recount the history of the Palestinian people and have been screened at major festivals and museums around the world, including Locarno, London, Viennale and the 35th São Paulo Biennial.
With Hasan in Gaza, directed and produced by Kamal Aljafari (Germany, Palestine, France, Qatar, 2025, 106')