With Hasan in Gaza

In 2001, Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari journeyed through Gaza from north to south. He was searching for the man with whom he had spent seven months in an Israeli prison over a decade earlier, on a charge of being a member of a hostile organization. In the years following this trip, Aljafari forgot all about the footage he had recorded. He recently rediscovered it in his archive, and has now edited it into this journal-style film.

Daily life in Gaza then was by turns vital and vibrant, then bleak and hopeless. We see children at play, bustling markets, small shops and cafés—but a darker reality looms in images of military checkpoints, demolished Palestinian homes, and the Israeli shelling of a residential neighborhood at night.

Yet none of this compares to the horrors taking place in Gaza now. With Hasan in Gaza now unintentionally serves as a portrait of a society that has likely been lost forever.