Chatter Box Film

All That’s Left Of You is a Multi-generational epic about a Palestinian family coming to terms with the creation of the Israeli state in 1948 up to the present day. Directed by Cherien Dabis.

Cherien Dabis is a Palestinian American filmmaker. Through most of her career she has been a figurehead of the burgeoning female voice in the Middle East being able to find a platform for her stories. This came to prominence in her feature May in the Summer (2013), a coming of age tale of sisters who seek to enjoy life without failing their upbringing in the region.

However, Dabis returns to helm a feature film of such political and dramatic intent that is both bold and invigorating for the message that the conflict of Palestine versus Israel brings to a wider audience. A divisive subject matter across the world, this film tells the story of three generations of a family that is torn apart from the creation of the Israeli state in 1948 up to the present day with the parents now becoming grandparents themselves returning to a homeland they do not recognise. A home changed forever, a new land built from the rubble of their home.

Dabis is careful to not point fingers, instead she tells a humanistic story and the narrative reflects the hardship her characters oppose throughout the occupation of their land by Israeli forces. One such haunting scene is the father and son returning home as quickly as possible not realising that the curfew had been brought forward, caught in a veritable no go zone, the pair are stopped by Israeli soldiers. One holds a gun to the father who insists he calls the son’s mother a whore loudly, when the son tells them to stop the father is threatened with being shot again. All of this is to make the father look like a coward in front of the son; a relationship destroyed by the work of others. Yet for all the shock of the scene, Dabis does fleetingly show one of the other soldiers looking away, not laughing with his fraternity, upset apparently that it comes to this in the first place.

This director is known more for more comedic offerings about familial dysfunction and yet the film as a whole shows a director flexing her muscles. Being able to hone their craft in lighter, comedic fare and then traverse to a work of such emotional resonance while not hammering home the point, is a victory for herself as a filmmaker.

The running time of over two hours flies by due to the vivid evocations of different time periods, the film serves as its own time machine going from the post World War 2 period to the 1970s up to the present day.

All That’s Left Of You enriches and educates the audience; the two senior citizens have emigrated to Canada in their later years, thereby becoming foreign nationals and so able to return to their displaced homeland. Despite living nearby, they could never truly go home.

This is a film deserving of the universal praise it has received upon the festival circuit – political yet personal, grand but modest, hopeful ending on a note of optimism amidst the scale of pessimism you would expect from such stories.

All That’s Left of You is released in UK cinemas from 6th February.