The weight of history and the scars of displacement take center stage in Palestinian American filmmaker Cherien Dabis’s epic family drama “All That’s Left of You.” Premiering to enthusiastic reviews at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, this wrenching portrait of intergenerational trauma spans nearly 75 years, tracing one Palestinian family’s struggle from the 1948 Nakba to the First Intifada and beyond.
Dabis, best known for her 2009 Sundance breakout “Amreeka,” returns with an even more ambitious and heart-rending tale. “All That’s Left of You” opens in the thick of the First Intifada in the late 1980s, as teenage protagonist Noor (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) navigates the narrow streets and roiling tensions of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. In a few kinetic scenes, Dabis sketches a vivid picture of Palestinian youth caught between humiliation and hope, before violence erupts and the story circles back to Noor’s family origins.
Nakba’s Enduring Scars
The film’s early sections depicting the Nakba, the tragic mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948, deliver weighty pathos and historical sweep as Noor’s grandparents Sharif (Adam Bakri) and Munira (Maria Zreik) are violently displaced from their ancestral home in Jaffa. Dabis pulls no punches in her depiction of the Nakba’s injustice and brutality, which serve as the original sin haunting generations to come.
The most difficult part was portraying the Nakba in a way that felt true to the collective Palestinian experience and trauma, but that also allowed for the specificity of this one family’s story.
– Cherien Dabis, Writer/Director
As decades pass and oppression grinds on, “All That’s Left of You” evolves into a thornier, more surprising and poetic exploration of intergenerational trauma’s ripple effects. Dabis lingers on the small moments that make up life for Sharif, Munira, their son Salim (Saleh Bakri), and grandson Noor under occupation – wedding dances and school lessons, propaganda films and heated family debates about resistance versus safety.
Searing Performances Bring Family Reckoning
It’s only in the film’s second half, as Noor’s injury in the intifada sparks a full-blown family and moral crisis, that the simmering tensions and unprocessed pains boil over into an emotionally shattering reckoning. Here, Dabis and her superb cast led by Saleh Bakri dig into the most provocative and profound questions of the Palestinian experience:
- How trauma calcifies into resentment and recrimination
- The impossible choices between security and justice
- The toll of having faith and identity fractured by oppression
While the film’s earnest direct-to-camera appeals can feel blunt at times, there is undeniable necessity to its cultural and political history lessons, rendered indelibly through one family’s wrenching journey. “All That’s Left of You” stands tall as an unflinching elegy for the continuing Palestinian plight, a poetic portrait of intergenerational scars, and a reminder of the remarkable resilience of the human spirit.
I wanted to explore how occupation, oppression and dispossession affect a family over time, over generations. How does that trauma manifest and morph? How is it passed on, even to those born after the original wound?
– Cherien Dabis, Writer/Director
A Landmark for Palestinian Cinema
As one of the most high-profile Palestinian films to emerge in recent years, “All That’s Left of You” represents a major breakthrough for Palestinian cinema on the world stage. Its prestigious Sundance premiere and warm critical embrace bode well for the film’s prospects, with distribution deals in negotiation.
For Dabis, who has long championed greater Middle Eastern representation in film and TV, “All That’s Left of You” is a passion project years in the making. The film was set to shoot in the West Bank city of Jericho in late 2022, but had to relocate to Cyprus and Greece following an Israeli invasion of Gaza.
Getting this made, bringing this story out into the world – it’s my small act of resistance. To preserve our history, our culture, our humanity on screen.
– Cherien Dabis, Writer/Director
Dabis’s opus joins a new wave of bold Palestinian films making inroads globally, from Farah Nabulsi’s Oscar-nominated short “The Present” to Ameen Nayfeh’s Venice prize-winner “200 Meters.” As the Palestinian struggle persists in a turbulent political landscape, the importance of telling authentic Palestinian stories only intensifies.
With its grand historical scope, searing emotional honesty, and tireless compassion for its characters, “All That’s Left of You” cements Cherien Dabis as a vital voice in world cinema. More than just a blistering indictment of occupation’s toll, this is a reminder of the unwavering Palestinian will to survive, the unbreakable bonds of family and homeland, and the necessity of art as resistance in the face of oppression.
