Footage shot on three MiniDV tapes in 2001 has become the backbone of Kamal Aljafari’s “With Hasan in Gaza,” the documentary chosen to open Locarno’s 78th Concorso Internazionale on 6 August. A teaser released by festival organizers sets the rediscovered images against contemporary aerial shots, a contrast Aljafari says exposes “a place and a time that no longer exists”.
The 106-minute film grew out of Aljafari’s search for a former prison mate and follows the director and his guide Hasan as they drive the length of the Gaza Strip, recording everyday life long before the current war. Production is credited to his Berlin-based studio with backing from partners in Palestine, Germany, France and Qatar, and involved two years of frame-by-frame restoration to stabilise fragile analog stock.
Festival director Giona A. Nazzaro has called the picture a “declaration of creative resistance” within a line-up culled from 6,373 submissions and boasting 99 world premieres. Industry trackers note that the film is one of three German co-productions in competition, underscoring Europe’s appetite for personal Middle East stories as audiences seek context beyond daily headlines.
Interest in first-hand Gazan testimony has grown across the circuit: Cannes paused in May to honour slain photo-journalist Fatima Hassouna during a screening of a separate Gaza documentary, an event that drew rare official words of mourning from the festival. Sales agents say that tragedy has sharpened demand; buyers from North America, Scandinavia and East Asia have already requested private links to Aljafari’s film ahead of its world premiere next Thursday.
Aljafari, whose earlier work received a 2024 IndieLisboa retrospective, calls the project “the first film I ever made but never finished,” stressing that showing Gaza’s ordinary rhythms is as urgent as reporting its destruction.
