Gaza Mon Amour: A wry Romantic Comedy set in occupied Palestine
Owen Hsi
Gaza Mon Amour, 2020, 87 Minutes, Directed by Tarzan Nasser, Arab Nasser
Issa a 60-year-old fisherman in Gaza has been quietly infatuated with Siham, a widowed seamstress who works at the market close to his stall. One day, while fishing, he accidentally retrieves an ancient statue of Apollo in his nets which changes his fortune, setting off a panoply of events for the aging fisherman.
Not content with being a simple cut and dry romantic comedy, the Nasser brothers have added a dash of Neo-Realism by showing the reality of life in Gaza: the difficulty of living under occupation in the world’s largest open air prison; providing depictions of its poverty, vast youth unemployment and power outages.
Noteworthy is the fact that they decided to take a different road to almost all other Palestinian films as it hardly features the Israeli Occupying Force, instead reserving the majority of its ire for the Palestinian Civil Police Force under Hamas. They are shown to be unreasonable, and significantly, in almost every single scene they feature, they are shown eating – giving a picture of an unjust and well-fed body of armed men policing an impoverished population – gendarmes of inequality.
The caustic portrayal of the venality of the Institutions Hamas created demolishes the myth of a progressive left nationalism as a counterweight to the Israeli occupying forces:
“For many, nationalism becomes almost the enemy of imperialism. There is a certain logic to this. Such a perspective sees imperialism causing a nationalist backlash in the country being adversely affected by an imperialist power. Nationalism, therefore, fights against imperialism. This has led to concepts of progressive nationalism and regressive nationalism. It is a debate that is hardly going to be resolved easily. The point that needs to be borne in mind is that without nationalist symbolism, without the ideological manipulation of populations to serve capitalist advances, then imperialism as we recognise it from the nineteenth century could not have developed. The antithesis of nationalism is not imperialism. It is internationalism.” (William Briggs, China, the USA and Capitalism's Last Crusade, 2021)
The film is actually based on a true story, a quote taken from the director’s statement at the European Film Awards explains:
“Gaza Mon Amour is a sweet dramatic comedy inspired by a true story that took place in Gaza in 2014. When a fisherman found a Greek statue of Apollo in the sea, Hamas confiscated it immediately and started looking for a buyer, hoping to make enough money to settle the country’s financial troubles. No one knows what happened to the statue. Some say it was sold and then destroyed in an air strike. It was really quite saddening to realize that our government did not know what to do with this statue, other than burying it in some cellar.”
Tragic to think, that the statue is forever lost, and harrowing to think of how much of Gaza has been destroyed since the film was made with the wholesale destruction of entire neighbourhoods in Northern Gaza. A recent comment in the prestigious medical journal the Lancet declared:
“it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2 375 259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip.”
(https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext)
The film is well cast with Salim Daw and Hiam Abbas in the leading roles, and overall, the film is exceedingly well done. Wry and understated, there are obvious comparisons with the filmmaking of Aki Kaurismäki in the Nasser Brothers cinematic approach. This is only their second feature film, but it astounds in its maturity and ability to create a multilayered plot with competing narrative threads.
This sophisticated film shows that love and moments of comedy are still able to flourish even under the most oppressive circumstances.
Gaza Mon Amour is currently streaming via SBS OnDemand.
https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/movie/gaza-mon-amour/2297273411610
