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Gazan twins in Cannes warn ‘nothing left’ of homeland

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,” said Tarzan when it premiered on Monday at the Cannes film festival.Since militants from Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, more than 18 months of Israeli bombardment 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 two-month total blockade.Israel allowed in several aid trucks on Monday but the UN said it was only “a drop in the ocean” of needs.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.-‘Human beings’-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,” said Tarzan.”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.The defence ministry however claimed it had “never counted calories” when allowing aid in.Despite all this, Gazans have always shown a love of life and been incredibly resilient, the directors said.”My father is until now in northern Gaza,” Tarzan said, explaining the family’s two homes had been destroyed.But before then, “every time a missile hit, damaging a wall or window, he’d fix it up the next day”, he said.In films, “the last thing I want to do is talk about Israel and what it’s doing”, he added.”Human beings are more important –- who they are, how they’re living and adapting to this really tough reality.”In their previous films, the Nasser twins followed an elderly fisherman enamoured with his neighbour in the market in “Gaza Mon Amour” and filmed women trapped at the hairdresser’s in their 2015’s “Degrade”.Like “Once Upon A Time in Gaza”, they were all shot in Jordan.- ‘Gaza was a riviera’ -As the siege takes its toll in “Once Upon A Time In Gaza”, a desolate Yahia is recruited to star in a Hamas propaganda film.In Gaza, “we don’t have special effects but we do have live bullets”, the producer says in one scene.Arab said, long before Gazan tap water became salty and US President Donald Trump sparked controversy by saying he wanted to turn their land into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, the coastal strip was a happy place.”I remember when I was little, Gaza actually was a riviera. It was the most beautiful place. I can still taste the fresh water on my tongue,” he said.”Now Trump comes up with this great invention that he wants to turn it into a riviera after Israel completely destroyed it?”Hamas’s October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza including 34 the military says are dead.Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed 53,486 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to Gaza health authorities, whose figures the United Nations deems reliable.Gaza health authorities said at least 44 people were killed there in the early hours of Tuesday. 

Cannes film shines light on secret life of migrant maids

Or Sinai didn’t have to go far to find the subject of her acclaimed debut film about the secret lives of the millions of women who support their families back home by being domestic workers abroad.She was chatting to the “wonderful Ukrainian woman” who looks after her mother, who has Parkinson’s Disease, when the housekeeper started telling her about the lover she had taken.”I realised that our view of migrant women is so wrong,” she told AFP at the Cannes film festival, where “Mama” is being shown in the official selection.”We think of them as poor women sacrificing themselves to do everything for their families.”But actually as I researched I realised they develop these temporary identities,” picking up a little comfort where they can.When the Ukrainian housekeeper “started working for my parents, they were embarrassed by her and tried to behave as if she wasn’t there. It was crazy,” Sinai said.”So I started talking to her and I immediately fell in love with her because she’s super funny.”She’s only three years older than me and she has such a dramatic life, which is an absurd contrast to how many people like her are in the shadows of our society” living their own hidden lives.- Israel govt ‘doing horrible stuff’ -It isn’t the first time Sinai has turned received ideas upside down. She won the Cannes Festival’s top prize for short films with “Anna” in 2016, where an overworked mother heads off looking for sex in a small town after getting an unexpected afternoon off from looking after her son.”Mama” is about a housekeeper who returns home from working for a rich couple in Israel to find her best laid plans for the family she has been bankrolling have been turned upside down in her absence.”In her attempt to give her daughter something meaningful, she actually lost all the years with her growing up and her ability to connect with her kids,” Sinai, 40, said.Instead she finds her passive, less-than-useless husband has supplanted her as her daughter’s confidant.Sinai’s own best laid plans were thrown up in the air by the outbreak of war in Ukraine, with the director forced to switch the story to neighbouring Poland.Belarus-born Evegenia Dodina, who plays the housekeeper — best known as Villanelle’s mother in “Killing Eve” — has been winning glowing reviews for her “carefully calibrated performance”.Screen magazine said: “It’s not merely that she conveys her joy and sadness, but how emotionally torn her character feels.”War closer to home in Gaza has cast a shadow over “Mama” and other Israeli films at Cannes.Hundreds of top film figures have signed an open letter condemning Israel for committing “genocide” in Gaza and the film industry for its “passivity”.With scores dying every day in Israeli strikes on Gaza since the festival began last week, Sinai said it was important to make “a clear separation between the government and the Israeli people”. “The government is doing horrible stuff” which many people were opposed to, she told AFP. “I wish the war would end immediately. I will always carry this on my back.”Between Ukraine and Gaza, “it’s really a miracle that we managed to make the film happen at this horrible time,” Sinai added.”The film is about wanting people to feel love for other people and that’s the only thing I can do, to spread love instead of war.”

France ‘determined’ to recognise Palestinian state: foreign minister

France is “determined” to recognise a Palestinian state, its foreign minister said on Tuesday, condemning Israel for the “indefensible” situation in Gaza created by its military campaign and humanitarian blockade.Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot also reaffirmed that Paris backed a Netherlands-led initiative for a review of the cooperation agreement between the European Union and Israel, which could affect political and economic ties.President Emmanuel Macron has left open the possibility that France could become the latest European nation to recognise a Palestinian state at a UN conference in June.”We cannot leave the children of Gaza a legacy of violence and hatred. So all this must stop, and that’s why we are determined to recognise a Palestinian state,” Barrot told France Inter radio. “And I am actively working towards this, because we want to contribute to a political solution in the interest of the Palestinians but also for the security of Israel,” he added.Barrot was speaking after Macron joined British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in a rare joint statement that angered Israel.The statement said that “we will not stand by,” threatened “further concrete actions” if Israel continued to block aid, and said that “We are committed to recognising a Palestinian state.”Pressed over what these actions could entail, Barrot again urged the EU to agree to the Dutch request to review the association agreement between Israel and the bloc and, in particular, examine if Israel was violating the accord’s commitments on human rights.He said this raises “the possibility of an eventual suspension” of an accord, which has political as well as commercial dimensions.”Neither Israel or the EU have an interest in ending that accord,” he added.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has authorised a limited amount of humanitarian aid after more than two and a half months of a complete blockade of the Palestinian territory, which is facing a catastrophic humanitarian situation.But Barrot said this was “totally insufficient”.The situation in Gaza is “indefensible because blind violence and the blocking of humanitarian aid by the Israeli government have turned Gaza into a death trap if not a cemetery.”In a warning to Israel, he added: “When you sow violence you harvest violence.”The war was sparked by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza including 34 the military says are dead.Gaza’s health ministry said Monday at least 3,340 people in the Palestinian territory have been killed since Israel resumed strikes on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,486.