Philip Rizk

Through the diary entries of the film's main protagonist K., we learn about her return from post-revolutionary Russia to her home in Greater Syria, in which, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, individual communities are trying to find a way to autonomy. Thanks to the juxtaposition with the Russian past, presented through shots from Soviet film classics such as Esfir Shub's Spain or Kinoglaz by Dziga Vertov, and the Syrian present, portrayed through various mobile phone footage, the director draws parallels between two incompatible realities and creates a multimedia essay on neo-colonialism and independence.

In THIS PALESTINIAN LIFE, director Philip Rizk uses an oral history approach to highlight the stories and perspectives of Palestinian villagers and Bedouin. This method avoids using "experts" to interpret the broader Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Rather, the film's anthropological and ethnographic method portrays the daily life of Palestinian communities, in order to explore in greater depth how Palestinian life is being undermined by the pressure of Israeli occupation. Especially in Gaza, this style reveals the profound fragmentation of community life. The following stories are threaded together and interlaced to reveal the similarity of Israeli measures of occupation throughout Gaza and the West Bank, and the similarity of Palestinian reactions through sumoud – perseverance – to remain on the land.