The anthology movie “From Ground Zero” opens with a Palestinian woman composing a letter. In Reema Mahmoud’s short film “Selfiedoubleu casino,” the young mother speaks of sleeping in a tent and communing with her son, a toddler, but it’s hard to wake from the nightmare of war. In the end, we see that her letter is an actual message in a bottle, which she throws into the ocean in the hopes of reaching someone, anyone.
It’s a poignant start to Rashid Masharawi’s collection of 22 shorts by Palestinian filmmakers, which is shortlisted for an Academy Award in the international feature film category. The vignettes, personal essays and brief documentaries share accounts of civilian life and death in the Gaza Strip that might otherwise be drowned out, or simply ignored, in depictions of the Israel-Hamas war. Rather than directing ire at Israel’s retaliatory attacks on the Gaza Strip, which have led to accusations of genocide, the films underline Gazans’ steadfast survival and the role of art in sustaining their spirit (to a point).
In “The Teacher,” a middle-aged professor waits in long lines to try to get water and recharge his cellphone. Daily challenges also include Israeli bombings: In “No Signal,” a man panics over missing a call from a relative buried under rubble who might still be alive. Mordant humor also crops up. In “Hell’s Heaven,” the narrator sleeps in a body bag, reasoning that he will end up there eventually and should benefit from the bag’s warmth while he’s alive.
Inevitably, physical context adds content in films made in the Gaza Strip today. Much as the Italian Neorealists filmed in the ruins of World War II, leveled buildings are visible in every other story. The buzz of drones above becomes the unofficial soundtrack. Bodily violence seems intentionally left offscreen, but Alaa Damo’s “24 Hours” has harrowing footage of a man buried alive, with only his head visible through the rubble.
The team, wearing gumboots caked with mud, were at the beginning of a monthslong process of painstakingly measuring pretty much every woody plant growing on this patch of Amazon rainforest in Colombia, one by one. A census of all 125,000 individual plants with a trunk size at least a centimeter in diameter.
n9ne bet slotIn 2012, while widely sharing his story as a source of inspiration, Mr. Moyers was prescribed an opioid painkiller by a dentist after an oral surgery. Quickly, he began craving the pills and soon couldn’t stop taking them.
Some of the shorts are rough around the edges. A few resemble TV news profiles that morph into dramatic narratives, such as “Everything Is Fine” by Nidal Damo, where a stand-up comic has a gig in a refugee camp, or a look at children learning stop-motion animation in “Soft Skin.”
The most moving entry might be Etimad Washah’s “Taxi Wanissa,” which begins as the story of a cart driver and a donkey. Suddenly, Washah interrupts the film, telling the camera that she couldn’t go on after the death of her brother and his children. With this simple acknowledgment, she forces us to focus on the horrors of reality.
From Ground ZeroNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters.doubleu casino
