Cannes 2025: Gaza casts shadow over festival, but films celebrate Palestinian resilience
With war still raging in Gaza, Palestinian filmmakers are in no mood to celebrate their strongest Cannes showing in years. But the movies screened at the world's leading film festival, including brothers Tarzan and Arab Nasser's "Once Upon a Time in Gaza", are powerful odes to resilience.
A first national pavilion in years and a pair of films with glowing reviews would normally be cause for celebration in Cannes.
But at the tent housing the Palestine pavilion, a short walk from Cannes' Palais des Festivals, no one has come to the glitzy French Riviera gathering for the revelry.
"We're clearly not here for the Cannes party," says film producer Rashid Abdelhamid, his voice drowned out by the ruckus of a cocktail event at the adjacent American Pavilion.
"But we're doing our own celebrations – of life and resilience," adds the producer of festival hit "One Upon a Time in Gaza", which premiered to rapturous applause earlier this week.
"We want to show that we're here, that we're alive, that we want to live and dance like everyone else," he adds. "And that we're staying where we are."
Gaza-born twin brothers Arab and Tarzan Nasser came up with the idea for "Once Upon a Time in Gaza" well before the start of the ongoing war that has wiped out most of their homeland – and made the title to their film eerily timely.
The Nasser brothers, who left Gaza in 2011 and shoot their movies in Jordan, describe their latest feature as "archival material" documenting a place that no longer exists.
Read more on FRANCE 24 EnglishRead also:Louder than bombs: Cannes screens tribute to Gaza photojournalist who refused a quiet deathCannes 2025: Nollywood basks in spotlight as Nigerian film finally makes the cut
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