2023-11-08 19:26:03
Yallah Gaza **
by Roland Nourier
French film, 1h41
« We are pushing the frontier of the worst. » Many sentences from this documentary have a singular resonance, like these premonitory words from Sylvain Cypel, ex-journalist of the Monde and D’Orient XXI. Completed in March 2023, Yallah Gaza (“Allez Gaza”) comes out in a dramatic context, different but obviously linked to its subject.
An excitement surrounds its release. One of its speakers, Mariam Abou Daqqa, 73, a Gazan member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who came legally to France for conferences on women’s rights, was placed under house arrest in Marseille on October 16, before recovering. his freedom.
A documentary with activist overtones
However, she will not be allowed to attend the screening of the film at the National Assembly on November 9, as initially planned. However, Pierre Stambul, president of the French Jewish Union for Peace, will be present. In the post-October 7 context, cinemas have abandoned or maintained screenings of this documentary with militant overtones, which may exasperate some but which enriches the understanding of the current conflict.
With Middle East specialists like Jean-Pierre Filiu, he traces the history of a territory gradually eaten away by Israel until it became the Gaza Strip, a space 41 kilometers long, 12 wide at most. Two million people are crowded there, two thirds of whom are refugees expelled from historic Palestine by the Israeli army in 1947.
A youth who thirsts for life and peace
Already author of the documentary The Chariot and the Olive Tree, Roland Nurier gives the floor to Jewish and Arab personalities who denounce the policy pursued by the Israeli government. They also evoke its colonial logic, the lack of respect for international agreements, the land, sea and air blockade imposed on Gazans since 2007, the living conditions of the latter in this open-air prison, as well as the thorny question of resistance.
Beyond the analyzes of historians, local political leaders, journalists and lawyers, the documentary captures daily life in Gaza where one in two inhabitants is under 20 years old. It is this youth, with its thirst for life and peace, which moves the most. Barely recovered from the intensive bombings of 2014 and 2021, it is showing resilience through studies, sport and dabke, a traditional dance whose performances among the ruins of buildings punctuate the film with joyful energy. Seeing all these faces and these hopes for a better future, inevitably arises a heartbreaking questioning about the future of each person.
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