Watching All That’s Left of You, the painful but tender family portrait of a film, we can’t help but sense a “what if?” scenario. Specifically, what if the piece had been conceived and realized after the Gaza atrocity, instead of just prior? That timing might have entailed more rage and angst in a film that, despite its indignant treatment of Palestine over many decades, maintains a pilot light of humanity and family values.
The film, Jordan’s Oscar Submission this year, is the brainchild of Cherien Dabis as writer, director, producer, and also a star (as the mother). Dabis, who has worked extensively in television, including Only Murders in the Building, had this passion project waylaid by October 7 and Israel’s obliterating war on Gaza. It was delayed and forced to move locations to Jordan, Greece, and Cyprus.
Ultimately, the film succeeds in humanizing the people of the oppressed and battered nation, while going deep into the complex history of its struggles, through phases of what has been reasonably labeled apartheid and genocide. It also provides a valuable framework and chronology of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, going back to the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948 and genocidal waves to the present.