Note: This article contains major spoilers.

The film “All That’s Left of You” evokes a layered state of astonishment, sorrow, and pain, accompanied by a familiar anger—an anger carried by every Arab, born with it, inseparable from it, and everlasting, sometimes without a clear source. This emotional weight is reflected in the film’s very structure, which does not follow the conventional division of beginning, middle, and end. Cherien Dabis does not narrate the story linearly; instead, she constructs it along parallel paths, as though we are faced with three routes of memory intersecting and overlapping across time.

Middle / End / Beginning

The film opens during the First Intifada in Palestine, where the grandson, Nour, is critically injured while participating in the uprising. His injury alters the course of the family’s life and places them before a new challenge: saving their son. “All That’s Left of You” is an epic spanning seven decades, through which we come to know the history of a Palestinian family from the Nakba in 1948 until 2022. Nour’s injury is the pivotal event that shakes the family. His mother, Hanan, begins recounting the story, taking us back to the roots—the Nakba of 1948—when Nour’s grandfather refused to leave Jaffa to protect his home and orange grove, sending his family to the West Bank to keep them safe.

Written, directed by, and starring Cherien Dabis, the film also features Saleh Bakri, Adam Bakri, and the late Mohammad Bakri. Dabis’s choice of this family to embody the film’s on-screen family was no coincidence; it was a conscious cinematic decision that deepened our sense of connection to them. By tracing seven decades of Palestinian history across three generations, Hanan emerges as the link between grandfather, father, and grandson, granting the film emotional balance and depth that reflect familial intimacy.

“All That’s Left of You” (2025) is Dabis’s third feature film, following Amreeka (2009) and May in the Summer (2013). With this work, she appears to have reached the height of her artistic maturity. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2025 and was later shortlisted for the 98th Academy Awards among ten films, three of which addressed Palestine, including Palestine 36 and The Voice of Hind Rajab. Throughout the story, one question lingers: to whom is Hanan telling this story?

When Life Intersects with Art

Filming began before the events of October 7 and the genocide that followed. These events forced members of the crew to leave, and production continued in other locations, including Jordan, Greece, and Cyprus. The film is an international co-production between Cyprus, Jordan, Germany, Palestine, Qatar, Greece, and Saudi Arabia. It was shot in parallel with the genocide unfolding in Gaza. Creating a film about the Nakba while witnessing another catastrophe lent the work an added human dimension and made it profoundly real.

“I am not here to blame you…
I am here so you may know who my son is,
and to tell you what happened to his grandfather.”

Dabis, a Palestinian American filmmaker, has also lived the life of diaspora and carries the inherited trauma borne by her ancestors and passed down to their grandchildren. In this film, she does not seek recognition as she did in Amreeka, nor does she attempt documentation as in May in the Summer. Instead, she simply sits and tells the story calmly and deliberately—the calm of one who knows and understands, the calm of someone who holds the truth.

“You cannot understand Palestine today without returning to 1948. That was the turning point—the beginning of Palestinian displacement.”

The trauma extends across three generations. The grandfather, portrayed by the late Mohammad Bakri, represents its beginning—the anger he bequeaths to his grandson, teaching him that he will be the one to save the land and restore rights to their owners. The father, Salim (Saleh Bakri), is a defeated man who denies his father’s words, believing him to live in memory. In truth, Salim himself lives within it. In a harsh moment, he even wishes his father would lose his memory. He grew up inside it, hiding it within himself while trying to adapt to his reality. He wanted nothing more than to raise his children. Unlike his father, he did not dream of returning to the orange grove in Jaffa, to his home, his bed, his homeland. He accepted being a refugee in his own country.

Nour, however—the Palestinian teenager who also carries the trauma of forced displacement and his grandfather’s memories—loses all trust in his father when occupation soldiers force him to insult his mother in front of him. Nour is not like his father; he does not carry the same fear.

These characters reveal the film’s delicate intergenerational balance and highlight the imperfect, complex relationship between past and present.

Initially, Dabis was uncertain about casting herself as Hanan. As she stated in an interview: “The actress inside me wanted the role, but the director inside me said, ‘Slow down.’ It took time to accept the idea because of the scale of the film. In the end, I cast myself six weeks before production began.” This decision granted the film authenticity and emotional depth, making Hanan the essential bridge between grandfather, father, and grandson, and lending the narrative particular intimacy and significance.

We could not have grasped the magnitude of the family’s loss without understanding what they once possessed. The story of the orange grove stands as the clearest testament to the economic life Palestinians led before the Nakba.

Time and Silence in Portraying Trauma

What stands out in the film is its meticulous depiction of daily life: warm colors and wide shots in Jaffa contrast with narrow corridors and high walls inside the refugee camp, evoking a constant sense of suffocation and a search for freedom. This visual balance creates an epic yet deeply human cinematic experience. Through the lens of cinematographer Christopher Aoun, the viewer feels like a member of the family, carrying the same pain and moving seamlessly between the orange grove in Jaffa and the camp’s corridors—between memory and place.

Silence here is not emptiness but a complete language for expressing trauma. It dominates the film’s tone and is entirely fitting. Despite its epic scope, the score by Amin Bouhafa is neither grandiose nor overtly mournful. It does not attempt to explain or amplify the pain; rather, it bears witness to it. Time itself is the film’s true protagonist.

Humanity as a Means of Survival

By the end, the film leaves us facing a moral dilemma. After the immense loss endured by this family, we are compelled to question humanity: Is it a choice, or something imposed upon us? Ultimately, we find ourselves aligned with the family, affirming their decision and believing in their convictions. Through Dabis, we learn that humanity is what ultimately prevails.

The film is currently screening in cinemas—a human experience worth watching. Dabis did not seek acknowledgment; she simply told the story from its roots, as it should be told and as it should be known.