Kamal Aljafari’s video recordings of a journey through Gaza in 2001 is the basis for this vibrant documentary of Palestinian life in defiance of occupation.
In November 2001, amid the Second Intifada, director Aljafari began documenting his search for a man he had been imprisoned with in Gaza in 1989. Joined in his search with a man named Hasan Elboubou, Aljafari rediscovered the footage, which was then stored on three MiniDV tapes.
A raw, poignant snapshot of Gaza during the Second Intifada, Aljafari’s documentary world premiered in the main competition at the 2025 Locarno Film Fest. It later screened at the Toronto and the BFI London Film Festival.
Aljafari perceives the film as “an homage to Gaza and its people, to all that was erased and that came back to me in this urgent moment of Palestinian existence, or non-existence. It is a film about the catastrophe, and the poetry that resists.”
And, indeed, as testament left by witnesses, this docu demonstrates how film can preserve spaces and times that have been physically destroyed, but remain very much alive in memory.
With Hasan in Gaza: Kamal Aljafari’s Raw Documentary about Palestinians during the 2001 Second Intifada
With Hasan in Gaza
Kamal Aljafari, Palestine, Qatar, Germany, France
Grade: B
Kamal Aljafari’s video recordings of a journey through Gaza in 2001 is the basis for this vibrant documentary of Palestinian life in defiance of occupation.
In November 2001, amid the Second Intifada, director Aljafari began documenting his search for a man he had been imprisoned with in Gaza in 1989. Joined in his search with a man named Hasan Elboubou, Aljafari rediscovered the footage, which was then stored on three MiniDV tapes.
A raw, poignant snapshot of Gaza during the Second Intifada, Aljafari’s documentary world premiered in the main competition at the 2025 Locarno Film Fest. It later screened at the Toronto and the BFI London Film Festival.
Aljafari perceives the film as “an homage to Gaza and its people, to all that was erased and that came back to me in this urgent moment of Palestinian existence, or non-existence. It is a film about the catastrophe, and the poetry that resists.”
And, indeed, as testament left by witnesses, this docu demonstrates how film can preserve spaces and times that have been physically destroyed, but remain very much alive in memory.