In a cinematic landscape increasingly compelled to bear witness to human suffering — even if Argentine festivals seem to overlook it — With Hasan in Gaza, by Kamal Aljafari, emerges as a profoundly moving work, not only for what it shows but for the way it exists. It is both a time capsule and a visual elegy. Composed from three MiniDV tapes filmed in 2001 and rediscovered by Aljafari more than two decades later, this documentary is not a reconstruction but a recovery of memory — the memory of a place, a people, and a moment that no longer exist.

The story behind the project is as fascinating as the footage itself. In 1989, while imprisoned, Aljafari met a man with whom he formed a deep bond. Over ten years later, he traveled to Gaza in search of him, accompanied by a local guide named Hasan Elboubou. The journey was documented without cinematic ambition, without a storyboard or planning — simply as a search. The material, stored and then forgotten in the director’s personal archive, was stumbled upon by chance in 2023. This discovery transforms With Hasan in Gaza into what Aljafari calls “the first film I never made.”

What unfolds from those images is a Gaza before its current devastation — yet already scarred by the signs of siege and occupation. Far from the total ruin we know today, the Strip appears vibrant, alive, and therefore even more heartbreaking. Children play by the sea, men laugh while playing cards in a barber shop, vendors complain about the economy but still open their shops. Yet this apparent normalcy is constantly disrupted by echoes of violence: bombed-out homes, the sound of gunfire, suspicious glances cast toward a camera that could easily be mistaken for a weapon.

The film’s editing has a hypnotic, deeply melancholic effect. Aljafari barely alters the footage’s original order. There’s no linear narrative, no explanatory interviews, no voiceover. The viewer is pulled into Gaza as the filmmaker once was: without certainties, guided only by fragments of dialogue, ambient sounds, and the intermittent presence of Hasan. This stylistic choice reinforces the document’s authenticity while turning the viewing into a sensory, almost ghostly experience.

Indeed, the spectral nature of the film is one of its most powerful qualities. “Photography and cinema are media of ghosts,” says Aljafari — and here that becomes literal. What we see are people, places, sounds, and landscapes that no longer exist. Time has transformed each frame into a testimony against oblivion. The girl who asks to be photographed and then vanishes into the crowd becomes a symbol of every Palestinian face erased from the official record, ignored by international eyes.

Unlike recent documentaries about Gaza that depict the present moment — such as No Other Land or Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk — With Hasan in Gaza speaks from the past to illuminate the present. Its power lies not only in what it shows but in the questions it compels us to ask: Where are those people now? What remains of that city, already under siege back then? Who will document those who survive beneath the rubble today?

The film’s vérité aesthetic — handheld camera, diegetic sound — adds to its intimate immersion. We hear the music playing in cars, distant gunfire, the buzz of drones, the murmur of conversations that shift from the banal to the desperate. Aljafari doesn’t underline anything. His gaze is humble, respectful, fully aware that he’s filming the unrepeatable.

In one of the film’s most touching scenes, a father recently released from prison explains how he’s trying to reconnect with his children by playing with them at the beach. It’s a moment of quiet tenderness that speaks volumes about the resilience of a people who, despite everything, insist on living. And yet that same scene carries a weight of tragedy, as it’s likely that neither that father nor his children survived the violence that followed in the decades to come.

The north-to-south journey traced by Aljafari’s camera is not only geographical but emotional. Each neighborhood, each street, each face becomes part of a visual symphony of daily resistance. At no point does the film resort to cheap sentimentality or overt denunciation — it doesn’t need to. The simple act of observing, of not looking away, already constitutes a political gesture.

With Hasan in Gaza is not just a film about Gaza — it is Gaza. It is the reflection of a land and a people trapped in an unending cycle of devastation. It is also an act of resistance, a silent cry against the world’s indifference. While Europe repeats the mantra of “never again,” Aljafari reminds us that “again” is happening right now, with the complicity of those who choose to look away.