‘…including my baby sisters, age three and one.’
‘My dad was humiliated, and he started screaming at them.’
IMAGE: Adam Bakri in All That’s Left of You.
In the summer of 2023, Palestinian American writer, director and actress Cherien Dabis was all set to direct her third feature, an epic saga about a large intergenerational family’s struggles from the Nakba in 1948 to the current day.
Nakba is the term used to describe the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians though violent displacement and dispossession of their land, property and belongings, by Zionist paramilitaries after the establishment of the State of Israel.
The film All That’s Left of You had a big cast which included three actor members of the well-known Palestinian Bakri family — Adam Bakri (Oscar-nominated film Omar) plays the younger version of the family patriarch Sharif, Adam’s real life father — the late Mohammed Bakri (Wajib and the TV series Homeland) played the older Sharif; and Adam’s older brother Saleh (The Band’s Visit, Wajib and The Teacher) plays Sharif’s older son Salim. Dabis cast herself as Salim’s wife Hanan.
But the events of October 7, 2023 changed Dabis’ plans and she had to start from the scratch, raising funds again and looking for alternative shooting locations.
Eventually, Dabis did complete the film and it premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
After that, it traveled to several festivals where it won a number of awards.
A deeply moving film All That’s Left of You takes the path of forgiveness and redemption as a means to bring peace between the Palestinians and Israelis.
All That’s Left of You was selected as Jordan’s official entry for the Best International Film Oscar, and has been shortlisted among the final 15 international films.
India’s entry Homebound is also in that shortlist as are two other Palestine-themed films Palestine 36 (Palestine’s entry) and The Voice of Hind Rajab (Tunisian film and Grand Jury Prize Winner at the Venice Film Festival).
The film is co-presented by two celebrity executive producers, Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem.
Things were moving fine for All That’s Left of You and the other Palestinian films when suddenly last month, the Indian government did not give them clearance for screening at the International Film Festival of Kerala.
Dabis’ filmography includes the Cannes film festival winner Amreeka (2009) and a number of hit shows, Only Murders in the Building, Ramy, Ozark and Quantico.
Dabis tells Aseem Chhabra, “The Palestinian story in the western media has been incomplete if it is ever featured in the mainstream narrative. At worst, it’s racist the way in which we are portrayed. Palestinians become displaced, and we are dispossessed and that story is never told.”
IMAGE: Cherien Dabi in All That’s Left of You.
Cherien, I want to talk to you about what we witnessed in Gaza in the last two years — the genocide, which eventually ended because of the ‘ceasefire’. I am sure your script was being prepared long before. But did the script, the shoot and the post-production get impacted in any way with what was happening on the ground?
Yes, I started writing this back in 2020, long before all of this began.
In fact, I had the idea for it much longer than that, for about 10 years ago. We started prepping the film in Palestine in May 2023. I was working with a local crew for close to five months. I had my key crew fly in from Germany.
We had already begun construction on our locations. We had amassed a giant warehouse with beautifully curated period props and set dressing. We were two weeks away from shooting when we were forced to evacuate in October.
So the film was deeply impacted by what happened on October 7, and really forever changed by what happened next.
The movie basically went into crisis after that.
We were in financial crisis, we were in logistical crisis.
We had to figure out whether we could keep going.
We had to raise more money.
We ended up going to Cyprus, where we were planning to shoot a small part of the film. We shot a little bit more than we were supposed to there. I kept hoping we could go back to Palestine, but we were just never able to make that happen.
So after Cyprus, we shot in Jordan, in the Palestinian refugee camps. The topography is very similar with Palestine.
You mean similar to the West Bank?
We had planned to shoot all over Palestine, in the West Bank, Jericho, Nablus and Ramallah. We had also planned to shoot in Haifa and Yaffa in Israel. Jordan was a good fit for the West Bank part of the film, but Haifa and Yaffa are very hard. You can’t find those places in Jordan.
So we did some of the shooting in Cyprus, and then in Greece.
The Tel Aviv scenes were shot in Greece.
The old city of Yaffa was recreated on Rhodes Islands, which are part of Greece and close to Turkey.
We had to start and stop so many times because we were looking for financing, figuring out where to go next. We ended up having to look for Palestine everywhere but in Palestine.
We also found ourselves making a movie about what was happening as it was happening, which was so incredibly intense. Some days we were shooting scenes and images that we were watching unfold on our news screens and on our social media feeds.
It was really utterly surreal and very painful. We were very immersed in the Palestinian story and everything that’s been happening since 1948 and it made the movie that much more important to us.
What was so great was that as crew and cast, we were so bonded after having to evacuate and going through all that together, and knowing that we were making something that had suddenly become even more important, more urgent.
The film became a container for our grief, our compassion and our love. It was beautiful to be able to create something during a time of such destruction, like it was such a gift to us, to be able to pour ourselves into it.
IMAGE: Mohammad Bakri, second from left, Saleh Bakri, third from right and Cherien Dabis, second from right in All That’s Left of You.
This is not a fictional story. It’s a story that happened to many Palestinians families. I read that your father migrated and went as a refugee to the US.
Yes, my father was born in a village in the north of the West Bank, and basically lived most of his life in exile. My mother is from Jordan.
My father became a refugee in 1967 and was not able to return to Palestine, until he got a foreign citizenship in order to just visit his family and return to the only home he had ever known.
He was separated from his family during that time, and it was obviously a major trauma for him.
I watched him suffer his entire life in exile and watched the situation just deteriorate more and more.
The character of Sharif, played by Adam Bakri and Mohammad Bakri (when the character is older), is somewhat inspired by my father. He was obsessed with news from Palestine and was always watching TV.
You were born in the US?
I was the first of my family to be born in the diaspora. But I grew up going back and forth to Jordan and the West Bank.
We would spend months at a time visiting my dad’s native village in the West Bank.
So I got a window into what life was like for Palestinians, and I saw my dad discriminated against and humiliated at borders and checkpoints. One of my first experiences traveling to Palestine was when I was eight.
You and your family had American passports.
Yes, but that didn’t matter. We were held at the borders between Jordan and the West Bank for like 12 hours.
The contents of our suitcases were picked through.
The soldiers ordered us to be strip-searched, including my baby sisters, age three and one.
My dad was humiliated, and he started screaming at them.
That was my first experience of what it meant to be Palestinian. It stayed with me.
Then there were stories I heard about, stories from the Nakba from 1948 and 1967. I wondered why the world didn’t know about these things. I wondered why the world didn’t know the origin of Palestinian suffering and injustice.
IMAGE: Saleh Bakri, right and Cheien Dabis, centre, in All That’s Left of You.
What do you want the viewers to take from this film? A lot of people just associate the Palestinians and their struggle with Hammas.
I want them to understand the origin of Palestinian suffering.
I want them to understand what happened to the people.
The Palestinian story in the western media has been incomplete if it is ever featured in the mainstream narrative. At worst, it’s racist the way in which we are portrayed.
Palestinians become displaced, and we are dispossessed and that story is never told.
I am a big fan of the Bakri family. You cast Mohammad Bakri and his sons Saleh and Adam. Where do they live? In Amereeka, you also worked with the wonderful Palestinian actress Haim Abbass (Succession).
I have always wanted to work with all of them, so to get to work with all three of the Bakri men in one film was really remarkable.
Mohammed (he passed away on December 24, 2025) and Saleh live in Israel. They are from north of Haifa.
Adam lives in New York and Dubai, Haim lives in France.
About your own career in Hollywood, do American filmmakers hesitate to cast you?
You know, it’s such an interesting question.
My straight answer is I don’t know.
If people did have any hesitation, I don’t think they show me. I don’t think I have ever really felt it overtly.
It’s a difficult identity to have, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff
