Few films feel as urgent as With Hasan in Gaza. Especially now, when Palestinian voices are so often drowned out, this documentary resurrects what has been erased: streets, faces, and laughter that once existed in Gaza before repeated cycles of war and occupation. While Palestine continues to endure military occupation and the horrors of genocide, the silence of much of the world remains a profound moral failure — regardless of whether a peace deal has been signed.

The film begins with the rediscovery of three MiniDV tapes from 2001. Director Kamal Aljafari begins by looking for a prison mate he last saw in 1989, but the search soon turns into a journey across Gaza with Hasan, a local guide whose fate we may never learn. The footage captures a Gaza that is familiar yet impossible to fully reclaim: children playing in alleyways, markets humming with voices, ruins standing next to lives still being lived. With sparse narration and haunting sounds, Aljafari lets memory itself do the speaking. With each frame, I couldn’t help but wonder – will this street ever be full of life again? Is this child now grown up and alive? A million thoughts ran through my mind as I tried to connect what I was seeing on screen with the harsh reality Palestinians are facing in Gaza, as well as the West Bank, today.

Visually, the film feels fragile. The MiniDV footage carries the texture of a home video, and every shot seems precarious – a small window into a world on the verge of vanishing. That fragility is what makes it so heartbreaking. Aljafari steers clear of easy condemnation or rhetorical anger; instead, he shows fragments of life before they were shattered. Palestine has long existed, both in identity and in struggle. As a modern political project, Palestinians declared a state in 1988, yet their cultural memory and presence in the region extend back over 2,500 years, unbroken by borders or maps.

Ultimately, Aljafari’s work is less about searching for Hasan than about refusing the erasure of Gaza itself. Hasan may never be found, but the act of remembering him – and the world he once inhabited – becomes resistance. In a time when images and headlines move faster than empathy, this film makes us pause.

In capturing what is disappearing and what has already been lost, Aljafari creates a cinematic monument against oblivion. This is cinema not as entertainment, but as survival. In resurrecting Gaza’s erased past, the film restores dignity to lives under siege and declares that, even in the face of genocide, Palestinians will continue to be seen – maybe not by the silence of the world, but certainly by us.

Written by Maggie Gogler

Featured image courtesy of BFI London Film Festival

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