Our story follows a Palestinian photojournalist as he risks his life to document Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza in the days immediately following the October 7th attack. The film opens with an elderly man, trudging through the rubble of his destroyed house; the place, he tells us, where he married his wife and raised his children. He’s bewildered by the destruction around him. He pleads for the world to intervene, tragically unaware of just how ineffective the international community would be in the months to come. At this stage, the entry of Israeli ground forces into Gaza was still just a threat by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But something felt different about this bombing campaign, which had already caused widespread damage and killed more Palestinians than the number of Israelis killed on Oct 7. And long before the International Court of Justice at The Hague would hear arguments that Israel was committing the ‘crime of crimes’, this elderly man uttered the word: genocide. In this man’s mind, he believed Israel was intent on destroying him and his people. And with that, the film is under way, and we meet our protagonist, Muhammad Qndeel. As a photojournalist, he had covered five previous conflicts. As we go with him to capture scenes of desperation at hospitals and morgues, he too tells us he has never witnessed a war of such intensity. Within the first week, he lost three of his colleagues that he shared an apartment with. Our film ends as we attend the funeral of one of them, reporter Hisham Alnwajha from the Khabar news agency, a death condemned by the UNESCO Director-General. As Qndeel mourns, he recounts his last moments with his close friend, who had insisted they take a ‘farewell selfie’ in anticipation that they may not survive much longer
