Three unearthed MiniDV tapes from 2001 offer a time capsule of life in Gaza before devastation. What begins as a search for a former prison mate leads to an unexpected road trip from the north to the south of Gaza, accompanied by Hasan, a local guide whose fate remains unknown. As the camera moves through Gaza’s streets and landscapes, it captures fleeting moments of everyday life: vendors, schoolchildren, shopkeepers, relatives, and strangers, all going about their days in a place that, today, has been forever altered.
In With Hasan in Gaza, Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari — one of the most prolific and formally inventive voices in Palestinian cinema — transforms forgotten footage into a time capsule of extraordinary power. What was once ordinary is now precious, even endangered. The film doesn’t mourn so much as it remembers, offering an intimate, street-level record of Gaza before its erasure. “It is a film about the catastrophe, and the poetry that resists,” Aljafari writes. The result is at once urgent, quiet, and unforgettable.
Media Partner
Community Partner
Palestine/Germany/
France/Qatar
2025
In Arabic with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Flavia Mazzarino
Cinematography
Kamal Aljafari
Editor
Kamal Aljafari
Original Music
Simon Fisher Turner, Attila Faravelli
Kamal Aljafari
Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker and artist. His films have screened at major festivals including Locarno, London, Viennale, and the 35th Bienal de São Paulo. He has received prestigious awards from FIDMarseille, Pesaro, and Visions du Réel, and in 2024, IndieLisboa hosted a full retrospective of his work. Aljafari has taught at The New School and DFFB in Berlin and was a Film Study Center fellow at Harvard and at Columbia University’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination.
Filmography: The Roof (2006); Port of Memory (2009); Recollection (2015); An Unusual Summer (2020); A Fidai Film (2024)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Hanging by a Wire
The Himalayas, Aug 22, 2023: a cable car bearing 8 passengers (six of them schoolkids) is left dangling 900 feet above the ground when two out of three cables snap. This nailbiting documentary recounts the increasingly frantic rescue attempts.
The Sun Never Sets
At the suggestion of her much older (divorced) boyfriend, Wendy (Dakota Fanning) takes a summer to reevaluate her life and date other people. She's reluctant at first, but then reconnects with an old flame... A gentle indie comedy from Joe Swanberg.
A Sad and Beautiful World
This Lebanese love story chronicles the romance between a level-headed businesswoman and a romantic restauranteur across several decades in wartorn Beirut. It's funny, charming, melancholy and you'll feel it all.
American Doctor
One of the most powerful documentaries of the year, this puts us smack in the open wound that is Gaza, filtered through the eyes of three American surgeons (of Palestinian, Jewish and Zoroastrian backgrounds) compelled to do their utmost to alleviate harm.