Allly baqi mink / All That's Left of You

 

Cherien Dabis: /اللي باقي منك/ Allly baqi mink / All That's Left of You (DE/CY/PS/JO/GR/QA/QA/SA 2025). Father Salim (Saleh Bakri) and mother Hanan (played by the director Cherien Dabis).

Telluride Film Festival 2025 TBA addition: "Saturday 8/30 TBAs * Sneak Preview * Noon Seminar * Le Pierre 8:45 Sneak Preview ALL THAT'S LEFT OF YOU (145 minutes) Q&A with Peter Sellars and Cherien Dabis "Writer-director Cherien Dabis's moving and eye-opening epic follows one Palestinian family over the course of multiple generations, telling a story of displacement, heartbreak and ancestral trauma. In the present West Bank, Noor, a young Palestinian teen, is swept into a protest and confronted by Israeli soldiers. How did he get there? Dabis brings us back to 1948 in Jaffa, as Israeli troops during the war, displace thousands, including Noor's grandfather, from their villages. In the present, we meet Noor's parents Hanan (played by Dabis) and her husband Salim (Saleh Bakri), whose spirit has been broken by the continuous oppression and the loss of his family's land. Powerful and focused, ALL THAT'S LEFT OF YOUR has the scope and ambition of THE BEST OF YOUTH. It's told with urgency, a deeply resonant portrait of a community that has been largely invisible and remains under siege. (Germany, 2025, 145m). In person: Cherien Dabis."

/اللي باقي منك/

Germany, Cyprus, Palestine 2025

Director: Cherien Dabis

Starring: Cherien Dabis, Saleh Bakri, Mohammad Bakri, Adam Bakri, Maria Zreik

    145 min

    Loc: Cyprus.

    Languages: Arabic, English

    Distributor: The Match Factory, subtitles: partly English

    Love & Anarchy 38th Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF)

    Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, Sat 20.9.2025 at 15.15–17.40

Diego Ginartes Rodríguez (HIFF 2025): "This epic-scale drama explores decades of Palestinian history through the story of a single family."

"In All That’s Left of You, Cherien Dabis delivers a standout and moving generational epic that spans 75 years of Palestinian history. Both intimate and political, the film traces the lives of three generations of a family marked by displacement and the relentless pressure of the Zionist occupation. The film is structured around a series of moral and existential choices, the gravity of which is shown with striking clarity. Dabis masterfully balances the familiar and the historical, drawing attention to how the personal resolutions echo the broader Palestinian struggle."

"All That’s Left of You is a powerful act of cinematic witnessing, weaving together past and present, memory and rupture, through richly composed cinematography and emotionally resonant performances. The result is not just a story of loss and humiliation, but a vivid testament to intergenerational resilience, the enduring will to survive amidst a violent occupation, and the dignity of those forced to endure what should never be forgotten." Diego Ginartes Rodríguez

"Eeppiset mittasuhteet saavassa draamassa tarkastellaan vuosikymmeniä Palestiinan historiassa yhden perheen tarinan kautta."

"Cherien Dabisin koskettava sukueepos All That’s Left of You kattaa 75 vuotta Palestiinan historiassa. Intiimi ja poliittinen elokuva seuraa kolmea sukupolvea yhden perheen elämässä, jota leimaavat pakkosiirrot ja siionistisen miehityksen jatkuva paine. Elokuva rakentuu moraalisten ja eksistentiaalisten valintojen ympärille, joiden merkitys kuvataan hätkähdyttävällä tarkkuudella. Dabis tasapainoilee mestarillisesti historiallisen ja henkilökohtaisen välillä näyttäen, miten palestiinalaisten laajempi kamppailu heijastuu yksilöiden päätöksiin."

"All That’s Left of You on väkevä elokuvallinen todistus, joka rikkaan kuvauksen ja tunteellisten näyttelijänsuoritusten kautta kietoo yhteen menneen ja nykyisyyden, muistin ja rikkoutumisen. Tuloksena ei ole vain tarina menetyksestä ja nöyryytyksestä, vaan elävä testamentti sukupolvia halkovalle selviytymiskyvylle keskellä väkivaltaista miehitystä sekä kunnianosoitus ihmisille, jotka joutuvat kestämään asioita, joita meidän ei koskaan tulisi unohtaa." Diego Ginartes Rodríguez (kääntänyt Inari Ylinen)

AA: Cherien Dabis's All That's Left of You is a family saga in three generations, covering the epic story of Palestine.

On the West Bank, as young Noor is seriously wounded at a demonstration, his mother Hanan tells the family story.

In 1948 during the British Mandatory Palestine, during the naqba, brutal Zionist military assaults force a Palestinian community in Jaffa to leave their native land. The family home and garden are robbed at gunpoint by the militia, the family forced to exile and the grandfather Sharif badly beaten and forced to hard labour behind barbed wire. He suffers his first heart attack and his health never recovers.

In 1978 there is a big wedding for Sharif's daughter. Sharif walks in his sleep, dreaming of still being under the fig tree in his garden in Jaffa. Palestinians are outsiders in their own country. Sharif's son Salim, a teacher, is walking with his own son Noor towards home when they are stopped by gunpoint by an IDF patrol of young soldiers, who threaten, humiliate and insult the unarmed Salim in front of his son. The encounter traumatizes both Salim and Noor for life. Sharif teaches Noor the Palestinian anthem "My Homeland". Noor starts to call his father a coward and turns increasingly to Sharif.

In 1988 Noor is a young rebel, wary of collaborators and infiltrators. In a demonstration, he is seriously hurt in the brain and falls into coma. Overcoming a series of bureaucratic obstacles, Hanan and Salim manage to get Noor into a top hospital in Haifa, but Noor cannot be saved. They discuss the proposal of organ donation and finally accept. There is a big and moving funeral memorial.

Hanan and Salim meet the Israeli family of the organ recipient Ali, their son. Ali is repugnant and unwilling to even meet them. "Kiittämättömyys on maailman palkka" is the untranslatable Finnish proverb about good deeds rewarded with ingratitude. But also: "hyvä työ palkitsee itsensä": a good deed is its own reward. This sober sequence is the heart of the movie. Its full meaning keeps growing after the film. In this film about violence, injustice and oppression, there is also this wellspring of dignity and transcendence.

The final sequence takes place in 2022. Hanan and Salim have become Canadian citizens and visit the family home in Jaffa. "We had to get a foreign citizenship to visit our home".

All That's Left is a magnificent historical family saga. The core psychology about children rejecting their parents and embracing their grandparents is emotionally and socially of burning relevance. Cherien Dabis and Saleh Bakri portray the complex roles of the parents caught in the storm currents of history with passion and conviction.

The film starts with a compelling drive, but loses some of its grip, while constantly providing deeply engaging passages.

... 

Love & Anarchy the Helsinki International Film Festival dedicates four films to the Free Palestine theme. I would like to see films also devoted to the deeds of Hamas, Hizbollah and their soul brothers. Without them we cannot understand anything about what is going on. 

I would also like to see Israeli films on Palestine. They are being cancelled by the Israeli government. We should not follow the example of that government. I mean films like: 

Dani Rosenberg: The Vanishing Soldier (2023) 

Natalie Braun: Shooting (2025) 

Nadav Lapid: Yes! (2025) 

Shai Carmeli-Pollak: The Sea (2025)

...

Once Upon a Time in Gaza is a showcase of how world history can be telescoped in a low budget film.

What I miss most is the big picture. We live in the age of the instant, and indeed, Instagram, but more than ever we need the opposite, the long arch and the capacity to handle complexity.

The tragedy of the Middle East is one of the most complex in political history. We should start with the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate of Palestine and face the injustice done to Arabs and Jews. Colonial powers set a death trap for both. Everybody who refused asylum for Jews (read Exodus by Leon Uris) shares a responsibility for what is happening today.

...

The slogan "From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free" was shouted before the screenings. The slogan is open to interpretation. Among them is the 1988 Hamas charter (the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement), revised in the 2017 charter. The ultimate goal is an Islamic state of Palestine and the destruction of Israel, in 2017 called the Zionist entity. The explicit antisemitism of the 1988 charter was edited away in the 2017 charter.

FROM THE 2017 HAMAS CHARTER: 

2. "Palestine, which extends from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean in the west and from Ras Al-Naqurah in the north to Umm Al-Rashrash in the south, is an integral territorial unit. It is the land and the home of the Palestinian people. The expulsion and banishment of the Palestinian people from their land and the establishment of the Zionist entity therein do not annul the right of the Palestinian people to their entire land and do not entrench any rights therein for the usurping Zionist entity."

18. "The following are considered null and void: the Balfour Declaration, the British Mandate  Document, the UN Palestine Partition Resolution, and whatever resolutions and measures that derive from them or are similar to them. The establishment of “Israel” is entirely illegal and contravenes the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and goes against their will and the will of the Ummah; it is also in violation of human rights that are guaranteed by international conventions, foremost among them is the right to self-determination."

19. "There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity. Whatever has befallen the land of Palestine in terms of occupation, settlement building, Judaization or changes to its features or falsification of facts is illegitimate. Rights never lapse."

20. "Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.  However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus."

...

Ghazi Hamad

Hamas Political Bureau

LBC TV (Lebanon)

24 October 2023

GHAZI HAMAD: "Israel is a country that has no place on our land.

We must remove that country, because it constitutes a security, military and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation, and must be finished.

We are not ashamed to say this, with full force.

We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again.

The Al-Aqsa Deluge [7 October] is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth... because we have the determination to resolve, and the capabilities to fight.

Will we have to pay a price?

Yes, and we are ready to pay it.

We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.

We did not want to harm civilians, but there were complications on the ground, and there was a party in the area with (civilian) population...

It was a large area, across 40 kilometers...

The occupation must come to an end."

Q: Occupation where? In the Gaza strip?

GHAZI HAMAD: No, I am talking about all the Palestinian lands.

Q: Does that mean the annihilation of Israel?

GHAZI HAMAD: Yes, of course.

The existence of Israel is illogical.

The existence of Israel is what causes all that pain, blood and tears.

It is Israel, not us. We are the victims of the occupation. Period.

Therefore, nobody should blame us for the things we do.

October 7, October 10, October 1,000, 000... everything we do is justified.

https://youtu.be/BJNccvNJtGk?si=7DGHVqqwtwOGT3Sp

https://www.memri.org/tv/hamas-official-ghazi-hamad-we-will-repeat-october-seven-until-israel-annihilated-victims-everything-we-do-justified