Your history books lied to you — these elders lived it, and they're finally talking.
The documentary records the memories of a group of Palestinian elders, mainly veterans from the 1948 expulsions. Their stories of refugee struggles are interspersed with poems of Mahmoud Darwish.
Writing
Darwish's poetry woven like grief-stricken scripture through testimony.
Direction
Bakri lets silence and weathered faces do the screaming.
Director
Mohammad Bakri
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The film is part of Bakri's decades-long project documenting Palestinian oral history, made when many 1948 survivors were still living — a race against time and mortality.
Taha Muhammad Ali, featured here, was a celebrated Palestinian poet who only learned to read at 17; his presence bridges literary and vernacular memory.
PS
