From Ground Zero, Palestine’s Oscar-shortlisted entry for best international film, is to get a sequel that will spotlight more stories from Gaza
From Ground Zero, Palestine’s Oscar-shortlisted entry for best international film, is to get a sequel that will spotlight more stories from Gaza during the ongoing war.
The follow-up, titled From Ground Zero Plus, will comprise four documentaries of 20-30 minutes each and will again be produced by award-winning Palestinian filmmaker Rashid Masharawi alongside Laura Nikolov of France’s Coorigines Productions.
It will mark the second project of the Masharawi Fund, which was launched in December 2023 to provide a platform for filmmakers and artists from Gaza to share their stories on the world stage.
The first was From Ground Zero, a collection of 22 shorts capturing life in Gaza amidst the war with a mix of fiction, animation and documentary films. The project received its North America premiere at Toronto and was released in US theatres on January 3 through Watermelon Pictures, with Oscar-winning documentarian Michael Moore coming on board as executive producer.
At least three of the directors from the anthology will return for the follow up. They include Ahmed Hassouna, the most established of all the filmmakers selected for From Ground Zero, who made Sorry Cinema for the first project, which explored how he put aside his work on a fresh feature to document life under bombardment, even burning his clapperboard for firewood.
For the upcoming collection, the director is making Citizen Osama, which focuses on a single journalist in Gaza. Hassouna, who has a degree in journalism, made his debut feature Istrupya in 2019, which won the special jury prize at Egypt’s Alexandria Film Festival.
Also returning is Reema Mahmoud, whose tiny film Selfie is the first in From Ground Zero. Her follow-up is about two women: a painter who now takes her brush to bombed buildings in Gaza; and another who is a musician who searches for a writer, composer and studio to record a song during the war.
Etimad Washah, who made the tiny Taxi Wanissa about a donkey that provides transport in Gaza, is also part of the upcoming project with Very Small Dreams, which documents the everyday needs of refugee women in tents.
Details of the fourth tiny have yet to be revealed.
Masharawi told Screen that editing on the project is set to begin at the end of February with the aim of having it ready by May.
“The war is still going on and so are our cameras,” said Masharawi. “These films provide training for fresh filmmakers while also giving them a job and to make them feel they are not alone. Through them, we hope to build a bridge between Gaza and the rest of the world.
“Palestinians always made films before the war. Now it has become more important to make documentaries in Gaza, to document what is happening in an artistic way.”
From Ground Zero was made in co-production with US outfit Watermelon Pictures, Turkey’s Metafora Productions, Jordan’s Royal Film Commission and UAE’s Sharjah Art Foundation.
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