I was honored to speak with Rashid Masharawi — the first Palestinian filmmaker ever invited to Cannes, and founder of the Masharawi Fund, whose anthology film From Ground Zero was shortlisted for the 2025 Oscars. We start with how he came to filmmaking at all: growing up in Shati Refugee Camp in Gaza, painting as a teenager because there was no electricity to watch television, and getting his first camera almost by accident — left unsold in a second-hand seller's bag because nobody in the camp needed a camera when they needed bread. He talks about filming in secret during the First Intifada, when carrying a camera was as dangerous as carrying a weapon, and smuggling footage out of a closed military zone to reach international news networks.
We go on to talk about identity and cinema without borders — his refusal to recognise the "green line" in his own filmmaking, since for him Palestinian identity is cultural rather than bureaucratic — and the complicated politics of Palestinian-Israeli co-productions, which he's largely avoided throughout his career. The conversation turns to From Ground Zero, the 22-short-film anthology he produced from inside Gaza during the current war, made with filmmakers who were themselves living through what they were documenting. We talk about the deliberate choices behind it: no overt anger, no direct blame, no mention of Hamas — a decision to make cinema as testimony rather than reaction, so the films don't age the moment the news cycle moves on.
"Once you belong to a nation, to a society who have history, who have identity, who have culture, cinema can take all these elements."
"I want to free the cinema. I want to free our message. For me, films — it's like dreams, like thoughts. Nobody can occupy dreams. Nobody can occupy thoughts."
“You need to be honest and you need to tell the truth. You need to think cinema. And you need to have something to say.”
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