rewrite this content and keep HTML tags
Palestinian director Iyad Al -Astal stressed that Palestinian artists who boldly reveal through their artistic works, Israel crimes, have become vulnerable to deliberate targeting by her army, “nothing but that they document the truth.”
Al -Astal, who grew up in the Gaza Strip and completed his cinematic studies in France, talked about the international support statement of Gaza, which was published in the French newspaper “Liberation” on May 12, under the title “The silence should not prevail at the Cannes Film Festival regarding the atrocities committed in Gaza.”
The statement included the phrase, “We cannot be silent while the genocide continues in Gaza”, and its support for more than 300 characters from the world of cinema, including director Iyad Al -Astal himself.
Tales from Gaza
After completing his cinematic education in France, Al -Astal returned to the Gaza Strip, where he started in 2019 with a documentary series entitled “Tales from Gaza” documenting the daily life of the Palestinians.
The documentary series that spanned about 250 episodes during the period from 2019 to October 2023 dealt with multiple topics, including the role of artists, youth, children and women in the invading society.
After the start of the recent Israeli war on Gaza, Al -Astal began filming a new documentary entitled “For the Dignity of Gaza”, which will be shown for the first time on May 27, at the Arab World Institute in the French capital, Paris.
Al -Astal left the Strip in February 2024, and is currently residing in France, where he talked about the reasons for his support for the statement published in the newspaper “Liberation”, and about his projects that focus on Gaza.
Crime partnership
Al -Astal said that he could not remain silent about what was going on in Gaza, so he decided to sign the statement published in the newspaper “Liberation”, adding, “Today we have to mobilize all our potential to defend the Palestinians and their rights, and put an end to what is going on in Gaza.”
The Palestinian director stressed that every person, whether it is an artist, journalist or otherwise, “bears a historical responsibility towards what is happening. If we do not contribute to stopping this war, we are promising partners in the crime.”
He expressed his hope that this statement will have an impact on the international scene, “We are talking about the Cannes Film Festival, where hundreds of or even thousands of artists meet to display their works. It is important for these artists, directors and comedians to listen to the message of their colleagues.”
Art resistance
Al -Astal sees that Palestinian art is a “form of resistance”, and explains that the artists in Gaza and the West Bank reveal through their writings, artistic works, or their cinematic films, or even through a song or a poem, about “the crimes committed by the occupation army. For this reason, they have become direct targets for this army.”
The Palestinian director pointed out that many stories were buried with the civilians who were killed, but the artists are working to revive these stories and turn them into a movie, song, or novel, “Today we are not only witnessing a military war, but there is also a media war and a systematic misinformation war.”
He criticized the stereotype of some media outlets about the Palestinians, saying: “The Palestinian is depicted as a fatal monster, while the crimes committed against him are ignored daily. The media is a partner in feeding this distortion.”
Gaza starvation
Al -Astal believes in the role of art as a human mediator, “When my director’s friends win prizes here in France, I ask them to be a voice for Gaza, to raise their pain on the platforms.”
He highlighted Israel’s use of hunger as a way to force the Palestinians to leave Gaza, and wondered angrily, “Why is a child preventing a milk package?
He pointed out that the residents of the sector were forced to eat wild herbs and animal feed in light of the scarcity of food and medicine.
Al -Astal also stressed that through his project “Tales from Gaza”, he was aimed at showing the invisible aspects of the lives of the Palestinians in Gaza in the media.
He said: “Here, especially in Europe, when the name of Gaza is mentioned, there is only talk about bombing, attacks, and violence.
Alive
The Palestinian director said that after the start of the Israeli war on Gaza, he decided to re -photograph with the people he met in his previous documentary series, in order to see how the war changed their lives, explaining that during this stage he completed a new documentary entitled “For the Karama of Gaza”, dealing with stories who were forcibly displaced from the Strip.
One of the children participating in the film told his memories on Fridays before the war, when the family was meeting on food, saying, “Today they are all hungry, they have nothing to eat.”
Al -Astal called on everyone to watch the film to see what life has become in Gaza, stressing that “there is no single word in this documentary that indicates hate.”
He added, “Creative people, artists, women, girls, journalists … tell the facts, describe the atmosphere of the war, and present a picture of Gaza as it was before the outbreak of the aggression.”
Since the beginning of the war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, Palestinian artists have been a target of the Israeli army raids, where the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and the Palestinian Ministry of Culture documented, in a joint report issued last March, the death of 118 workers in the cultural and artistic field in the Gaza Strip during the year 2024, in Israeli raids.
Among the most prominent workers in the artistic and cultural sector who were killed by the Israeli war machine were the artist, Mahasin Al -Khatib, the vocalist Hamza Abu Qinas, a member of the “Asayel Watan” group for the popular Dabkeh Tala Balouha, the plastic artist, the head of the Fine Art Forum, Thaer Al -Tawil, the plastic artist Halima Kahlt, the theater artist Mohamed Al -Salal, the actor Alaa Qaddha, the director Film Mustafa Thuraya, according to previous data for the Ministry of Culture in Gaza.
