Locarno 2025: With Hasan in Gaza
Kamal Aljafari's documentary, compiled from MiniDV tapes in 2001, is a powerful rumination on memory in the face of Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza
In trying to find a way to express anything adequate about Kamal Aljafari’s new film With Hasan in Gaza, it didn’t help to look at what others have to say. “It’s a documentary with no structure,” according to one person on Letterboxd, while another says it’s “more a mess than a real film” and a third person declares it’s “not making much cinematic sense.” Maybe the most revealing comment was from one person who said that the film’s raw footage could make for an amazing documentary, but Aljafari’s film “ain’t it.”
This is not to make examples of those people, or to scrutinize these specific comments on a platform that isn’t really designed for scrutiny. What stuck out to me was the common factor of demanding something more narrative, more cinematic. With Hasan in Gaza is a found film made up of three MiniDV tapes from 2001 that Aljafari discovered over one year ago, containing footage of a trip he took through Gaza. He presents the three tapes in order, with no additional edits to the footage. But the demand from the aforementioned criticisms is that the film is not familiar enough in its presentation, and the implication from that demand is, were Aljafari to repackage it in a way that makes the oppression more palatable, it might fare better for a certain type of audience. Sometimes, looking at things through an exclusively aesthetic lens can be about as useful as digging one’s head in the sand.
With Hasan in Gaza gradually reveals the purpose of Aljafari’s trip, which is to try and find a man he met while in prison in the 1980s after being detained as a teenager. Hasan acts as Aljafari’s guide and at first the trip suggests, for those unaware of Gaza’s history or even The Second Intifada, some sense of normalcy. They check out a food market, film one of Gaza’s universities, and observe Gazans on the streets and in bars. The reality of life in Gaza soon reveals itself, as Aljafari strikes up a conversation with a man who recently got out of jail after being detained for eight years. As Aljafari and Hasan’s journey continues, and they encounter people telling them about their deplorable and dangerous living conditions, the constant threat of violence from Israel dominates the film. Its most harrowing moments take place in Hasan’s home at night, where Aljafari films shelling and gunfire from the IDF while periodically taking shelter in the bedroom of Hasan’s young daughter.
The footage speaks for itself. The humanity of the Palestinian people that Israel and its allies refuses to acknowledge shines through in both their anguished cries and resilience in carving out lives for themselves under dehumanizing and life-threatening oppression. The film’s final section has Hasan driving around a city where he believes the man Aljafari’s looking for resides, although on screen text explains there wasn’t even a name or address to work with. The text combined with the film’s soundtrack (going back and forth between old songs and a droning sound) moves us away from the immediacy of the footage to a present context of Aljafari’s own memories as he revisits this period from his life. We watch Aljafari chase a memory within a Gaza that no longer exists.
If there’s any solace in the film, it arrives at the very end, where a scrolling text has Aljafari detail how he remembers the man he searched for from his time in prison. The film closes on the words “I remember,” a phrase used in the context of Aljafari’s recollection of the inmate’s act of defiance against Israeli guards. But the act of remembering led to this search over a decade later and, almost 25 years after that, to this film. If nothing else, the memories can endure.