Filmmaker Mariam Shahin looks back at how the blockade and wars in Gaza have reduced people’s hopes to dust.
Documentary filmmaker Mariam Shahin has been making films about Gaza for over 30 years. She produced a documentary for Tel Aviv Tribune English in 2009, which told the stories of six groups of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip whom she followed for four years. When she moved to Gaza in 2005, she felt a powerful sense of optimism after the Israeli withdrawal. But by 2009, the war had severely damaged its infrastructure, neighborhoods, businesses and communities – and that optimism had evaporated.
Amid the current war, Mariam looks back on these stories and reflects on the wasted potential, lost hopes and devastated lives after 16 years of blockade, poverty and conflict.