Twin Gazan filmmakers Arab and Tarzan Nasser said they never thought the title of their new film “Once Upon A Time In Gaza” would have such heartbreaking resonance.
“Right now there is nothing left of Gaza,” Tarzan said when it premiered Monday at the Cannes film festival. Since the Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has ravaged large swathes of the Palestinian territory and killed tens of thousands of people.
Israel has vowed to “take control of all” the besieged territory of more than two million inhabitants, where United Nations agencies have warned of famine following Israel’s implementation of a two-month total blockade.
Aid started to trickle into the Gaza Strip on Monday, following widespread condemnation of the siege. The Nasser brothers, who left Gaza in 2012, said their new film set in 2007, when Hamas Islamists seized control of the strip, explains the lead-up to today’s catastrophic war. “Once Upon A Time In Gaza”, which screened in the festival’s Un Certain Regard section, follows friends Yahia and Osama as they try to make a little extra cash by selling drugs stuffed into falafel sandwiches.
Using a manual meat grinder that does not rely on rare electricity, student Yahia blends up fava beans and fresh herbs to make the patty-shaped fritters in the back of Osama’s small run-down eatery, while dreaming of being able to leave the Israeli-blockaded coastal strip.
Charismatic hustler Osama meanwhile visits pharmacy after pharmacy to amass as many pills as he can with stolen prescriptions, pursued by a corrupt cop.
Israel first imposed a blockade on Gaza in June 2006 after militants there took one of its soldiers, and reinforced it in September 2007 several months after Hamas took power.
“The blockade was gradually tightened, tightened until reaching the genocide we see today,” Tarzan said. “Until today they are counting the calories that enter,” he added.
An Israeli NGO said in 2012 that documents showed Israeli authorities had calculated that 2,279 calories per person per day was deemed sufficient to prevent malnutrition in Gaza.