CITIZEN OSAMA (AL MOWATEN OSAMA) Documentary

Screening to be followed by a conversation with producer Laura Nikolov.

In CITIZEN OSAMA, the distance between documenting history and simply surviving it has all but disappeared. Osama Al-Ashi, a young Palestinian photographer turned citizen journalist, remains in northern Gaza with his wife and newborn son, training his camera on a world being destroyed around them. As fellow journalists are being targeted and killed by Israeli forces and his family fears for his safety, Osama continues to record — not only bombings, hunger and devastation, but the stubborn rituals of everyday life that persist amid catastrophe. Director Ahmed Hassouna’s intimate documentary unfolds with the immediacy of a dispatch from inside a place closed to international journalists. The film is filled with indelible images and affecting moments — families searching desperately for food, overwhelmed hospitals and displaced residents returning to Gaza City to reclaim what remains of their homes. Osama’s eye for beauty makes these images all the more haunting, capturing flashes of tenderness, even humor and hope alongside unimaginable loss. Both a testament to the necessity of bearing witness and a deeply personal portrait of one family’s endurance, CITIZEN OSAMA asks what it means to call a place home when that home is being erased. –Mimi Brody