With Hasan in Gaza

a film by Kamal Aljafari
2025, 112 minutes

Poster

Synopsis

Constructed from three MiniDV tapes shot in Gaza in 2001 and rediscovered years later, the film transforms recovered footage into a profound cinematic meditation on memory, loss, and the passage of time.

Originally conceived as a search for a former prison mate from 1989, the film unfolds into an unexpected road trip from the north to the south of Gaza with Hasan, a local guide whose fate remains unknown. As the camera moves through Gaza’s streets and landscapes, it records fleeting moments of everyday life—fragments of a reality now irreversibly altered. With Hasan in Gaza throws mainstream images of a people displaced into relief through the traces of absence bygone time evokes.

Reviews

“With this crux – to film, or not to film – With Hasan in Gaza brilliantly centres the need to bear witness as no less than a matter of life and death, preservation and loss, liberation and occupation.”
- Arron Kennon, Sight and Sound

"Against all these crimes of extermination, every second of this documentary is an archive of presence, demanding recognition and remembrance." - Erika Balsom, New Left Review

Press Materials

High Resolution Stills and Press Kit
Press Release

Where to watch

In Theaters

Playdates

Apr 10 & 11: Los Angeles Festival of Movies - Los Angeles, CA
Apr 22: Chicago Palestine Film Festival - Chicago, IL

May 14: Mayworks - Toronto, ON
May 29: Metrograph - New York, NY
May 29: Media Arts Center San Diego - San Diego, CA
May 30 -31: Northwest Film Forum - Seattle, WA

June 4-10: Cinema Public - Montreal, QC
June 5: Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe - Santa Fe, NM
June 5: AFI Silver Theatre - Silver Spring, MD
June 10 - 20: Winnipeg Film Group - Winnipeg, MB
June 10: Lark Theater - San Francisco, CA
June 11 & 16: The Cinematheque - Vancouver, BC
June 13 & 26: Carbon Arc - Halifax, NS
June 18 & 19: Cleveland Cinematheque - Cleveland, OH

July 7: Lightbox Film Center - Philadelphia, PA

Festivals & Awards

Winner - Locarno Film Festival - Europa Cinemas Label