In front of the pain of others, often, it is silent. Especially if “the others” represent a fairly distant people, by physical distance, but also cultural and social. The news mediated by news, videos, social media add a further media distance that mitigate the reverberation, as long as they continue to turn in emptiness, in an increasingly distant and muffled echo. When the camera is challenged by those who live that pain, and not only is it an indirect witness, it regains a human dimension. And it becomes a story.
Last year, the Palestinian director Rashid Masharawi He decided to present the human face of the extermination of the Palestinian people by the Israeli state. A few months after the outbreak of the conflict, Masharawi involved girls and boys between 18 and 29 years old in the making of the collective film From Ground Zero“From the starting point, from scratch”, in Italian. Composed of 22 shorts with a variable length, between 3 and 6 minutes, it tells of a personal perspective about life in the gigantic tent city that welcomes over a million refugees at the foot of the rubble of Gaza. Documentary movies or subject narratives, all contribute to presenting a different nuance of life under air bombings, in a large kaleidoscope of almost two hours with poignant beauty. Beauty in the most human meaning of the term. «Dear friend, I am writing to you a letter that I hope you will read while I will still be alive. I wish you a beautiful and happy life, better than mine now »appeals to the spectator Reema Mahmood, director of the first short presented. Not everyone. To each of us. «I would like to share my daily problems with you. Destruction, ruin and death are consuming everything around me ». There is no aesthetic of death, nor pornography of pain. There are not even tears. There is only the story of those who live in those curtains, sometimes with unknown people. Of those who steal a sack for corpses because he was unable to save anything from the rubble of the house. Of those who, from a single tank, obtain the water to wash the dishes, their body, the clothes, water the plants and download the toilet. Of those who in twenty -four hours found themselves three times under the rubble.
There is also room for dreams: there are those who dance to the rhythm of makeshift drums or with their own shadow projected to the wall, those who recover the project for the university, those who wear and every day stages a show for passers -by.
There is a lot of life in every cross -section. And there is also death. But you don’t cry, it is counted. The dead are counted and the remaining people are counted. If in western culture death takes shocks, in Palestine it is an integral part of everyday life, and perhaps this is the absolute more sharp angle of the entire film: you will queue for the shower, for the food, to load the phone, the wood is split, you look at the waves of the sea and you die. Everyone has someone to count.
The seventh short, by Khamis Masharawi, appeals the children. They ask them what story they want to tell, build with colored cards. And the children choose that of their mothers, who before sleeping mark their names on the arms and legs. “As he wrote on me he cried, and I the same,” says a girl showing the arm. «If they bombard us they will tear us apart. I don’t want me to write about my body, I don’t want me to collect my pieces »closes a child with a pleased smile, in favor of the room.
«Flooded by images that would shocked and indignant in the past, we are losing the ability to react. The compassion, forced to the extreme, strokes »wrote the philosopher Susan Sontag in 2003 in his essay In front of the pain of others. Perhaps, this time, in front of the pain of others it is not possible to remain impassive. Because they are no longer “others”. They are the ones who tell us about their story.
Entered the 2025 Oscar short list, From Ground Zero It was distributed in Italy by the Revolver company – Founded in 2002 by Paolo Maria Spina – and projected in 4 months in over 75 cities of all regions, and in over 120 Italian screens. Between June, July and August the film will be screened again in over 40 Italian cities, in the summer arenas. There are also two sequels, currently still in post production: there are four short films of half an hour each, fictional, non -documentary. In each film there are two directors and two directors. The Making Off by From Ground Zero. This triple work will be ready for the end of summer.
From Ground Zero It was also projected in the United Nations Auditorium in New York on May 15, on the occasion of the commemoration of the Nacba Day, in the presence of most of the Arab world, Asia, Africa, South America.
