‘Nobody can occupy your imagination’: From Ground Zero is a collection of 22 short films made in Gaza

by Bob Schwartz

“Cinema can protect memory and can keep Palestinians on the ground because films are like dreams, ideas. Nobody can occupy dreams. Nobody can occupy ideas. Nobody can occupy memory … Nobody can occupy your imagination.”
Director Rashid Masharawi

From Ground Zero (streaming) is a collection of 22 short films made in Gaza. Initiated by Palestinian director Rashid Masharawi, the project was born to give a voice to 22 Gazan filmmakers to tell the untold stories of the current war on film. It was Palestine’s entry to the 2025 Academy Awards.

The Guardian reports:

‘Nobody can occupy your imagination’: From Ground Zero’s producer on documenting his native Palestine

Rashid Masharawi, who produced the anthology of 22 films that was Palestine’s official entry to the Academy Awards, has remarkable optimism about the future of Gaza

Being a Palestinian under Israeli occupation will not help someone make a good film, according to Rashid Masharawi, but a good film-maker will help Palestine.

With his anthology film From Ground Zero (in Arabic: From Zero Distance) he attempts to do just that by bridging the space between the Palestinians in Gaza who have endured a campaign of annihilation behind closed doors to those around the world watching as an incomprehensibly vast tragedy unfolds in real time.

The result is a collection of 22 shorts by Palestinian film-makers, ranging from documentary to vignettes and animation, which turns our attention not only to the past – and to the unrelenting violence of the present, when the death toll in Gaza continues to climb – but also to the future and what cannot be taken.

“Cinema can protect memory and can keep Palestinians on the ground because films are like dreams, ideas. Nobody can occupy dreams. Nobody can occupy ideas. Nobody can occupy memory … Nobody can occupy your imagination,” said Masharawi in an interview in London ahead of the film’s release in UK cinemas on 12 September.

“We have to be optimistic. We have to tell the people: ‘Tomorrow it’s a better day. Keep dancing, keep creating, keep making films, because it means you have the future.’”