An emotional Mohamed Jabaly unveiled his new feature doc Life Is Beautiful in the international competition at IDFA on Monday. The premiere came as the Palestinian director said his relatives in Gaza have been displaced by the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
“For me, standing here and talking about my film is the only way I can feel I am doing something. I could just hide inside the room and decide not to talk,” said Jabaly of the decision to go ahead with his screening.
“Talking is really difficult…and being silent is even worse for me at the moment. We are at a moment where we have to speak and we have to share. Sometimes words really fail. Why are we speaking when our people are dying? But at the moment I know how important it is to share our stories…we need everyone to understand the struggle we are living - and have been living for years.”
Jabaly’s film, sold by First Hand Films, tells of what happened when the director was invited to Gaza’s sister city Tromsø in 2014. Once he arrived in Norway, he couldn’t leave as the borders to his homeland closed indefinitely. It was to be seen years before he saw his family again.
“I don’t want to talk about war but I am forced to. With what is happening in my city [Gaza], everything has stopped in our lives,” the director reflected.
Jabaly said Israeli tanks were currently in his neighbourhood in Gaza, close to Shifa Hospital. He was last in Gaza in January following the death of his mother.
He also explained why he decided to keep his film, produced by Kristine Ann Skaret and Sarah Winge-Sørensenfor Oslo-based Stray Dog Productions, in IDFA in spite of the Palestine Film Institute announcing its withdrawal from all organised activities at the IDFA market on Sunday.
“It’s the filmmaker’s choice. We made this film to be shown. Taking it from a festival that has audiences would mean we lose more voices,” Jabaly explained. “Speaking will help me to share this pain and showing my film will help me show my people’s pain.”
The director is currently living in Tromsø. His previous film Ambulance (2016) chronicled his experiences in the summer of 2014 working on an ambulance crew in Gaza when the city was under Israeli fire.
Jabaly is now preparing a feature called Efforts, which will look at the experiences of Norwegian soldiers who were part of UN peace keeping forces in Gaza in the 1950s and 1960s.
“These soldiers had their personal archives. They bought their first camera in Gaza and documented all their trips. I got access to these veterans who have been Gaza and loved the city,” the director explained. “Over 10 years, they met the Palestinians and learned about their lives.” He has secured Norwegian veterans’ archive footage of his home city which will feature prominently in the film. Development funding has come from the North Norwegian Film Centre.
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