All that's left of you

An epic-scale journey into the depths of the Palestinian plight, masterfully tracing and carefully dissecting a multifactorial and convoluted intergenerational trauma. Starting in medias res, in a setting of pulsating action and anguish that leaves a tormenting question unresolved, we are plunged (and swept) from the get-go into a story of undulating pain and a recurring sense of futility. Divided into four chapters - the surge of violence during the Nakba in 1948; the consolidation of a new status quo in the West Bank in 1978; the outbreak of the First Intifada in 1988; and the filmic present of 2022 - Cherien Dabis's devastating All That's Left of You makes us both witnesses and participants in a fathomless and irreparable loss. Yet Dabis resists the lure of convenient sentimentality, weaving instead a labyrinthine character study, shrouding a series of underground and catastrophic conflicts within the bounds of family. In a meticulously paced yet heart-wrenching finale that imparts a bitter aftertaste of unfinished repatriation and existential uprooting, life and hope emerge as the sole bulwark against inhumanity and dehumanization.