JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
For people who grow up in politically stable countries, the trauma of displacement can be hard to understand. Cherien Dabis' new movie, "All That's Left Of You," makes it starkly and stunningly plain. It begins in 1948, when the mass displacement of Palestinians during the conflict surrounding the creation of the state of Israel forever changes one family's future.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ALL THAT'S LEFT OF YOU")
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (As characters, shouting in non-English language).
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) No one ever thought any of this could happen. I'm here to tell you how it started.
SUMMERS: For Dabis, it's a story that is deeply personal. Her father is Palestinian. In 1967, the year Israel took control of the West Bank, he was exiled from his home there.
CHERIEN DABIS: So I grew up with his longing and heartache for this place and also grew up visiting it and really kind of observed the different generations of my own family and the way in which our identities were shaped by the events that were happening in Palestine.
SUMMERS: We spoke with Dabis, who wrote, acts in and directed "All That's Left Of You." She says it not only brings together a fictional family story, but that of an entire people.
DABIS: This film is the Palestinian collective story in many ways, and it is our origin story in many ways. So I wanted to be as truthful and authentic as possible.
SUMMERS: I know that you had been preparing to shoot this movie in the West Bank in Israel, and then the war in Gaza, of course, started. Tell us what that meant for you and for the film.
DABIS: Yeah. So we had been prepping in Palestine for about five months, and we were two weeks away from shooting when the events of October 2023 took place. And it was quite devastating for, you know, so many reasons. Within a few days, we realized we weren't going to be able to move around the country. You know, we were planning to shoot everywhere, you know, from the West Bank to Israel proper. And we had done a tremendous amount of work. And within a few days of October the 7, we realized that we were going to have to evacuate.
And the whole movie was just thrust into total uncertainty. I mean, we had no idea whether we'd be able to keep going, whether we'd be able to raise more money in order to keep going because everything we'd spent in Palestine was gone, and it was looking like we weren't going to be able to shoot there. So the entire time that we made the film, we were in a state of crisis - financial crisis and logistical crisis. Like, we found ourselves making a movie about what was happening as it was happening.
SUMMERS: Yeah.
DABIS: And that was just emotionally so painful and so all-consuming and draining. You know, some days we were shooting scenes that we were watching come across our news feeds - things that were happening in Gaza. It was just really profoundly surreal and painful. And in some ways, I think the movie probably has more emotional depth because of everything that we went through, from the making of, to what we were witnessing as we were making it. And the actors and I would often talk about how it felt less like we were acting and more like we were channeling the grief that we...
SUMMERS: Oh.
DABIS: ...Felt and that we were witnessing in the world.
SUMMERS: How did you take care of yourself and how did you all take care of each other when you were living through this while creating this film? It's impossible not to see the two as linked.
DABIS: Yeah. It really was impossible. And I think, you know, we were really bonded quite early in this film. Even just prepping for five months in occupied territory was so challenging. You know, we were stopped often at checkpoints. We were interrogated at airports. So we were having to really kind of navigate some difficult political terrain from the very beginning, and we were really there for each other. I mean, there was a lot of grief on set. You know, I would say that it wasn't just on camera. It was definitely behind the scenes. I think a lot of us were really grieving and grieving together.
I mean, in some ways, it was beautiful to have the film as a container for all of us. You know, all of us just poured ourselves into it - our grief, our outrage, our compassion - and you could feel it. You could sense it. And I think some days of prep felt more like days of therapy. When we were still in Ramallah, we all sat in a circle and just kind of talked about what was happening, and none of it was planned. None of it was forced. It just happened very naturally that we ended up kind of in these small groups talking about what was going on.
SUMMERS: What is it that you hoped to show the world about what Palestinians have been through and where things stand right now in this current moment?
DABIS: Well, I think, as someone who grew up in the West, you know, surrounded by media headlines that often, you know, portrayed us as nameless, faceless, you know, numbers, I was keenly aware that there wasn't a whole lot of knowledge of the Palestinian experience of how people have been shaped by everything that's been happening. And so I really wanted to show that. The political events are there, but they're in the background.
And the focus of the film is the family and the micro - how this family is changed by what is happening all around them. How, you know, a grandfather radically changes over time. And as he becomes older, becomes kind of angrier and angrier but still with a sarcastic sense of humor, still trying to kind of figure out, like, how to navigate this new terrain, but having lost everything, just living in the past and regretting all of the mistakes that he made.
You know, so much of that is kind of inspired by my own family and what I've witnessed and how I've seen people change over time because of the situation in Palestine, you know, the situation back home getting worse and worse. And so I really wanted to show that micro. I wanted to show that impact on human beings.
SUMMERS: Cherien, though violence is, of course, all around this movie, I personally wouldn't call it a violent movie. Violence forces the action, but it feels really carefully meted out on screen. Can you talk to me about that choice?
DABIS: I wanted to carefully choose my moments of violence in this film because I didn't want to make a violent film. I wanted to make a movie that really showed the consequences of violence on human beings. And so I wanted to show the different kinds of violence, you know, that Palestinians have experienced from 1948 until almost the present day. And I wanted to show the consequences, the impact of that violence on our characters. And sometimes the violence isn't necessarily only physical. You know, there is a scene at the center of the film that focuses on a father and son, and they're stopped by Israeli soldiers who humiliate the father in front of the son.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ALL THAT'S LEFT OF YOU")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character, non-English language spoken).
DABIS: And it's a moment of real psychological violence that stays with this family and changes the relationship between this father and son. And that, for me, is one of the major moments of violence in the film.
SUMMERS: Ultimately, though, I think, at the end, love is really what stuck with me from your film. Is it fair to think of this, at least in part, as a movie that's about the love of a family?
DABIS: Absolutely. I think that this is a movie that is really about the love that it takes to survive tragedy and personal loss. And for me, the title of the film is so much about love. You know, "All That's Left Of You" is love at the end of the day. All that's left of this family, after everything they've been through and everything they survived, what is left of them is love. And that is what has helped them to survive. And I think, really, that's what I wanted the movie to be about is sort of the love of this family and how that is what allows them to kind of get through all of these tragedies that they have to endure.
SUMMERS: Cherien Dabis wrote, directed and stars in "All That's Left Of You." It's in Theaters Friday. Thank you.
DABIS: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF IMOGEN HEAP SONG, "THE WALK") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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