‘From Ground Zero’: Palestinian filmmaker Rashid Mashawari on curating 22 short films that give Gazans a voice
Palestinian filmmaker Rashid Mashawari wanted to give voice to the people in Gaza by documenting their day-to-day experiences, many of which go unheard by the outside world. To capture the diversity of perspectives from Gazans, he curated a collection of 22 short films to create From Ground Zero, Palestine’s official 2025 Oscars entry for Best International Feature.
Through the power of cinema, Mashawari hopes his film will allow international audiences to see beyond what’s been portrayed by the media. “The news was showing, day and night, all the bombings, and massacres, and what’s going on on the ground,” he tells Gold Derby (watch the video interview above). “Nobody can come close and touch the small details of the daily life of all these innocent people in Gaza. Cinema can do that.”
The collection of shorts is comprised of animation, documentary, and fiction — and each filmmaker lived through their own traumas throughout the process. “It was very difficult for me because I was the one encouraging these filmmakers to go and film,” Mashawari admits. “At the same time, they were trying to save their own lives, or search for food, or search for electricity. At the same time, I’m trying to save the stories, the films, and the material. It was very difficult because I know the priority. The priority was not to make films, it was to stay alive.”
In Etimad Washah‘s “Taxi Wanissa,” audiences see how devastating the process could be. “On the second day of shooting, suddenly she said, ‘I cannot continue, I just lost my brother and all his family. They are now under the building. Nobody can bring them out.’ In this moment, my reaction was, ‘Forget everything.'” After a few weeks passed, Mashawari contacted the filmmaker and told her, “We need to end this film. Let’s show the reality.” In doing so, Washah appears on camera to explain her movie was not finished because her family had been killed. “These filmmakers are not only the storytellers, they are the stories,” Mashawari says.
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“Nobody was safe from what’s going on,” he continues. “Everybody was touched in some way. Sometimes, I have the feeling that people who are still alive are suffering more than those who died. When people are killed, they’re killed. They lost these people. They lost their houses. They stay with all these memories. They have to suffer the future. The trauma will continue for more than 10 years after this is over.”
Another heartbreaking moment comes from Khamis Masharawi‘s “Soft Skin,” which depicts children in art therapy showing their names written out across their arms in legs. They’ve been marked so their families will be able to identify their bodies if they’re bombed. “They want to find their kids!” the producer exclaims. “To bury them in a normal way. To collect all of their body together. When a kid asks his mother, ‘Why are you writing this?’ I don’t know what she could answer…This is why this film was partly animation…just to make it possible for people to watch it.”
Since the film’s completion, Oscar winner Michael Moore has served as an executive producer, and Watermelon Films, the first distribution company for Palestinian films in the U.S., has taken over its distribution. Mashawari is thankful that the collaboration has led to greater visibility.
“For the last 30 years, I was making films and trying to show them to the world,” he says. “All the time, we are fighting to push our stories. To get our films in theaters and in festivals we need to be Superman. We need to be in Cannes, Venice, Berlin, and Toronto to get attention. I’m very proud of Watermelon Films and what they did for From Ground Zero. All of this professional, beautiful promotion — and they keep it with the theme of the film — with the same identity. They represent us as Palestinian filmmakers.”
From Ground Zero is now playing in select theaters nationwide.
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