Changing the Narrative Through Film and Representation With Cherien Dabis

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Growing up Arab in America can feel like living under a microscope while also being completely unseen. Watched, judged, othered, and then at the same time walked past and ignored. Today's guest noticed that reality early on. She saw how Arabs were being reduced to stereotypes, how narratives hardened into so-called truths, and how the stories that lived on screen shaped real lives. Instead of accepting that, she chose to be part of changing it. My guest today is Sharina Divis, a filmmaker, actress, and a director who turned to film because she believed stories could change perception and shift minds. You may know her from the Netflix series Mo, or from her latest film, All That's Left of You, which she both directed and acted it. In this conversation, we talk about identity, intergenerational trauma, and what it means to carve a space when no one else is making that space for you. This is a conversation about grief and agency, about film as resistance, and about why telling our stories on our own terms matter. This is City Stories. I'm your host, Leila, inviting you to pour a cup of tea and listen in to the stories that remind us of who we are and where we come from. So if we were sitting with your sitti today, what would be the first thing that she would serve us?

SPEAKER_01 1:40

I have so many things in mind. I mean, I would say shea, tea. Yeah. No, it would be tea or coffee with a lot of sugar. But I also remember uh my grandmother on my mother's side as a kid offering people cigarettes. Like it was one of the first things she offered to people when they came into the house. And she would like really like kind of to chidale home, like, no, no, please, I insist you smoke a cigarette. I thought that that I always thought that was kind of an interesting tradition that we used to offer people cigarettes.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

That's pretty funny. That question always kind of gives us a little bit of insight into the guest. Um so I just love to kind of start off there. But can you share a little bit more about your family's roots and what Belad your family is from and where did you grow up and kind of where are you based now?

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yeah, so my my father is actually from the north of the West Bank, a village called Zebabde, which is kind of considered the sister city to Janin in the north of the West Bank. My my mother's side of the family actually is Jordanian. My mom was born in Salt, uh Jordan, and then raised in Amman, but spent like, you know, winters in Jericho back when you could easily travel between Jordan and the West Bank. And her family is originally actually from Bit Shabab and Lebanon. That's kind of the background of my family. My dad was exiled from the West Bank in 1967. Um he simply wasn't present in the West Bank when Israel occupied the rest of historic Palestine. He was actually in med school in Cairo at the time. And because he wasn't present in the West Bank and did not get an ID card, they refused to let him back in. He was kind of automatically rejected, refused the ability to return to live in his homeland. And it took him years to get foreign citizenship just to return to visit his family and the only home he'd ever known. Eventually, he met my mother. They immigrated to the US right before I was born. So I was the first in my family born in the US, in Omaha, Nebraska, of all places. And people asked me, like, how did your parents end up in Omaha? Well, my dad actually got a residency, a medical residency at Creton University in Omaha. So that's how they ended up there. And then he was recruited to a small town in Ohio, which is where I mostly grew up, but returning often to Jordan and the West Bank to visit mom's family and my dad's family. So I was really raised between cultures, like really kind of one foot here, one foot there, never quite um American enough for the Americans, never quite Arab enough for the Arabs. Always sort of feeling like I didn't quite fit in anywhere and yet I could get by anywhere. I felt the privilege of that, but I also felt like the outsider at any place that I went. And of course, as I got older, I learned to just appreciate the privilege of that much more. Like the fact that I can drink from my culture and that I had such a close upbringing. My parents really made sure that we had deep roots in Palestine and and Jordan and that we got to spend as much time as we could with family there, despite how difficult it was and how far away we were. I mean, certainly visiting Palestine was always a huge challenge. And certainly my dad stopped taking us to visit his family in the West Bank because he was just harassed and humiliated in front of us too many times and just did not want to deal with it anymore.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Yeah, it's such a dehumanizing experience to go through, and that's the whole purpose that they're trying to make you feel. You've spoken about growing up as a Palestinian American in a small town kind of Americana vibe, a place where identity can feel really invisible, but also hyper-visible all at the same time. How did that shape your understanding of your own identity?

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Well, I was certainly aware of how much I did not belong in this small town in the United States. My parents had accents, everyone knew where we were from. They knew nothing about where we were from, by the way. It was things like confusing Palestine with Pakistan, like not having any idea what Palestine was, where Palestine was, why Palestinians seem to be fighting so much, why are you such angry people? And even when we would return to Jordan and Palestine, it would be like, Do you have phones over there? Do you have cars over there? And it's like, no, the jumbo jet lands in the middle of the desert and we take camels to our mud huts.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Yeah. I had a teacher ask me before if um our homes are made out of clay. And I was like, wow, okay, all right. Well, good to know that you are who's educating America. But yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Yeah. It's that's actually pretty scary that it's I mean, yeah. I'm talking about the 1980s in small town, Ohio. But I think you're right. There's still so much misinformation, and there's such a huge dearth of information about who we are and how we live and, you know, where, like why everything is happening, like everything that we're seeing today, you know?

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Was there a moment in time that really made you feel the weight of your Palestinian identity growing up?

SPEAKER_01 6:31

For the most part, like growing up in this small town, my family, like I wouldn't say we fit in, but we were accepted. We were accepted enough, right? I definitely felt like an outsider, but as a preteen, I was always working hard to try to fit in, you know? And then the first Gulf War hit in 1991, and I was like 13, 14. This actually was a huge turning point in my life. We had lived in this community for 10 years at that point. And we went from being friends and neighbors to being the enemy overnight. My dad, who is a pediatrician, neontologist, um, I it was very common for me in this small town to have people come up to me and be like, your dad saved my son's life. But suddenly my dad was the enemy. Now, his name is Naziz, so they started calling him the Palestinian Nazi. His name is N-H-D-I-H. And we got death threats on a daily basis. Um, love it or leave it, we'll get Saddam and we'll get you two. There were crazy rumors that my dad's son was fighting in Saddam Hussein's army. My dad had five daughters. He had no son. And then the craziest part was that the Secret Service came to my high school to investigate a rumor that my older sister threatened to kill the president. This is not a this actually happened. She was a threat to me. Not the president.

unknown 7:46

Ready?

SPEAKER_00 7:47

So unfortunately, this is an experience that I think we all know all too well growing up post-9-11 on the East Coast. And I had the chief of police come knocking on my door as a fifth grader. My father's name was Osama. Lucky for us. And so I had the chief of police literally knocking on our door because some of the kids in my class wanted to make a prank. They were bullying me, saying that I like threatened them, which I obviously never did. But it was funny for them. And it unfortunately obviously was like very traumatic for us to go through something like that.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Yeah. So traumatic. This was a massively traumatic time in my family. I remember my parents whispering at night about where to move to. They didn't feel safe. For me, it was like such a political awakening. It was my first year of high school. I had friends who came up to me, so-called friends, who were like, my my brother might have to go fight in the army because of you. It was such a shocking time. And it was a time where I became really obsessed with why, the why of it all. Why do people feel that we're a threat? What on earth is making them think that we are threatening and that we are violent? And that was when I really woke up to the power of film and television and the stereotypes that are perpetuated there. I really, really concluded that those stereotypes were having a direct impact on my family. And I remember it being like, and God knows how many other people are suffering the same fate as us. It's so crazy to me because now it's 30 some years later, and it and it's like the same thing. The same, perhaps even worse.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Yeah. I mean, I think anybody who's Pausinian, anybody who's Arab kind of has these same political experiences growing up. Whether or not we were looking for it, it is a part of our identity. Those traumatic experiences shape us. You kind of touched upon how then that made you go into film. But storytelling kind of has so many different buckets that it could fill. Why did you go with film specifically?

SPEAKER_01 9:45

I think I was always sort of in love with cinema and television. As a kid, I would sort of look at the screen and really think to myself, I want to do that. And I didn't even know what that was. You know, I think I just maybe I saw the actors on screen, I saw people who looked like they were having fun. Certainly more fun than the adults in my life, you know. My, you know, my dad was sort of obsessed with Palestine, watching the news every single day, smoking his lungs out. My mom was the homesick immigrant who didn't want to be in the United States, really missed her family and wanted to be home. But I think that I really escaped through film and television and storytelling in that way. And so from a young age, I was always thinking about it and wanting that. And then when I was 12, my parents bought a camcorder and they handed it to me because I was um the only one of their kids who they knew would read the manual front to back. I was a total nerd. So I read the manual, I learned how to use the camera. And then my mom would instruct me to videotape really boring things like birthday parties and holidays, like people opening gifts, and I'd be like, this is really boring. I'm gonna tell people what to say and do to entertain myself. And that was literally how my directing career began. I just started telling people what to do on camera. You're the puppets here. Totally. And it was just to entertain myself. And then I realized I I was actually entertaining them as well. So it became fantastic. This really fun way to just bond and and tell stories and express ourselves. And I started doing it with my friends and and they were all on camera, but when they didn't do what I wanted them to do, I would fire them and do it myself. That was kind of the beginning of my acting career. Are you the eldest sister?

SPEAKER_00 11:24

So you have five.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

I'm the second oldest, actually.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Okay. So you have a couple kind of younger sisters to boss around with in that great.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

And they were all about it. They were totally willing to do what I wanted on camera.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Yeah. That's awesome. Um, I'm so glad that you had that platform to really build a career off of that. But film spit historically has really been a place where Arab and Palestinian stories have been either misrepresented or just totally not told at all and erased. How do you navigate being in institutions and spaces that were never really built for our stories?

SPEAKER_01 11:59

The experience during the first Gulf War made me realize the power of cinema in particular, the power of representation. And over time, I kind of became a little obsessed with the media, to be honest. I became obsessed with how the media was representing us. And I discovered Jack Shaheen, who wrote um, you know, the sort of encyclopedia Real Bad Arabs, which in that book he covers like nearly a thousand Hollywood films and how horrible the representation of Arabs, you know, is throughout this huge, you know, kind of library of films. You know, I saw it in films that I watched, you know, throughout my teenage years, like in movies like True Lies. I was just like, wow, we are really depicted as like horrible monsters and terrorists and just was so mustache, twirly, like villainous. So I went into this industry knowing I wanted to represent. For me, it was all about representation. In fact, I don't know that I would have even chosen to be a filmmaker if it weren't for that, because I think that the first Gulf War changed me that radically. There was a moment during the first Gulf War where I was like, I will never be seen as American in this country. I will never be accepted for who I am unless I fight to create space for that, unless I really create authentic, real representation of who we are, you know? So I went into this knowing certain things, but of course, it's always so much more sobering when you face it and you experience it. With my first two feature films, which are drama comedies and, you know, kind of lighter, you know, you could even call them somewhat palatable, given especially kind of the content of my third feature, which could be seen as much more polarizing or controversial, even though it's so incredibly loving, compassionate, and gentle a film, but it still covers material that is considered somewhat taboo in the United States, right? And I really felt strategically I needed to make these first films. They're very much who I am. I'm very interested in dramas that make you laugh and comedies that make you cry. And heart and humor is really the tone that I love the most. So I made these films, and I think for on some level, I felt somewhat embraced. And I didn't really realize how much I was being held at an arm's length until now, really until making this film, and looking at how difficult it has been for any Palestinian film to get distribution, and knowing that distribution is key. Distribution companies are the ones who decide what movies go into theaters and get seen and what movies don't, what movies get buried and no one ever finds out about them. If you look at the history of Palestinian cinema, which includes my own previous films, not a single one of our films has ever gotten mainstream distribution. And so I think with the first two films, I I wasn't really thinking so much about that. You know, I was really just excited that I was getting to make films. I was excited by the critical acclaim and the festival embrace. I was focused on the success of those films. And I think with this film, and especially following the last two years and just feeling the shock of just how incredibly worthless our lives are. I think it's been so shocking to so many of us the last two years. It's like we kind of knew, but we didn't really know the extent.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Just how long people can really go turning a blind eye when it's so far in their faces.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

And it just doesn't seem to matter how many of us are murdered or slaughtered. It doesn't seem to matter that we're in a full-on genocide, and it doesn't seem to matter that they were carpet bombing us. People drew the line at starvation, but I'm like, really? All of the things that came before like did not warrant drawing a line. Like it just has been a year of, I feel like, one shock after another. So I think that I've reached a point now where I'm seeing the extent to which we are just so shut out of a system that was truly not built for us. We have allies. We have some great allies and more and more people who are speaking up and standing up and standing with us on the on the right side of history. I think for me, that's really where I find hope. I think that's where many of us find hope. We're paying this insanely high price, but waves of humanity are waking up. And I think it's the one thing that's keeping us going, thinking like, okay, surely at some point this will stop. Enough people will speak out. But I've now reached a point where we need to create our own gate. We need to create our own system. We need to own our own pipeline. I I don't want to be a part of a system that is holding us down, that is refusing to give us any kind of avenue that is erasing us, that is ignoring us. I've reached a bit of a turning point in my career.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

I love that for you. Because like you, you were intentional. You were trying to be palatable with your first two films. You had that thought process. Like you already knew what was going to be the way that it was going to be viewed and the line that you had to walk. So I love there's something so freeing about being like, we're never going to be accepted. So I have to make our own space for it.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

There was that thought process. None of my films have been financed in Hollywood. I've always had to go outside of the system to get my movies made. And you could say they were marginally embraced by some of the establishment, certainly by festivals like Sundance and organizations like Film Independent. My first film was very beautifully recognized and awarded and all of all of those amazing things. And it was, it was a very personal story inspired by my own family's experience during the first Gulf War. That was the story I wanted to tell. So it wasn't like I made compromises to tell it, but absolutely, as you said, I really went about strategically making a movie that would, that would be disarming, that would be funny, that would be light and buoyant, and that would look at racism towards Arabs, Muslims, and especially Palestinians within this Palestinian family and the film. I look back on that and I was happy with that kind of marginalized success. I'm not happy with that anymore. 20 years into my career, three films, all of these TV shows later, I feel like I have earned more. And I think that I'm not getting more. And I and I'm not alone, by the way. I say I, but I guess I should be saying we. We we deserve more. We as Palestinian filmmakers and storytellers deserve more. And some of us have been at it for decades now, and we're still being held at arm's length. Our stories are not being recognized. So I, yeah, I think it's time for some radical change.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Yeah. You're one of the best people to trailblaze that path ahead for all of us as a community. You know, you've spoken about the stereotypes within the film industry and that kind of being the reason why we are still where we are and why we where we find ourselves. And I think a real way to combat that is to humanize us as Palestinians and as people. What are some intentional ways that you focus on within the work that you do to humanize Palestinians?

SPEAKER_01 19:02

I feel like this idea of humanizing us, I don't talk about it that way anymore. I once did because you can't humanize human beings. There's there's no need to humanize human beings. When you when you consider how dehumanized we've been, I understand the desire to talk about it in that way. The fact that we need to rehumanize ourselves within the within Western media. But the way that I've started thinking about it is I'm not looking to humanize human beings. I'm looking to honor the humanity that has always been there, but that Western media refuses to show, that Hollywood refuses to show. I'm looking to shatter these horrific stereotypes, dangerous misrepresentations that have literally resulted in Palestinians being murdered. I really do think for me, Hollywood is culpable in this genocide. Hollywood is culpable in our dehumanization. The images that Hollywood has put out for nearly a century is one of the reasons why people believe that we are inherently violent and therefore we must be held at bay. We must be in an occupied type of situation so that we're kept in cages because we're wild animals. I have set about making stories about our humanity because that is what the world has not gotten to see. And for me, that's very easy because there's so many amazing examples of our humanity everywhere. The ways in which Palestinians have been able to rise above the violence that they've endured, the ways in which they have worked really hard not to have hatred and anger and rage in their hearts and have tried to channel it into something, into some kind of an action that can be beneficial for their community, that can be beneficial for the younger generation. I've always been so inspired by these stories. And some of these stories are within my family, and some of these stories are stories that I hear every time I go to Palestine. Stories of people that have endured like horrific violence and have tried to rise above it or find meaning in it or just channel it into something, you know, good. I find that to be really beautiful. And I my contribution to our community is to tell those stories, to tell those stories about our humanity that we're not getting to see anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

That's such an interesting perspective of we don't need to humanize humans. That's that really kind of gave me food for thought, even in terms of the way that I posed that question. So I appreciate that level of insight. All that's left of you tells an intergenerational story. And as someone who really feels deeply with intergenerational stories, that really resonated with me. Uh, what made you want to explore that angle?

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Well, I was always kind of fascinated watching the different generations within my own family, you know, both on my mother's side and my father's side. I I grew up more with my mother's side than my father's side because, you know, it was so traumatic to go back to Palestine, to the West Bank. My my dad was so often humiliated in front of us on these trips that he decided to stop taking us at some point. And my first memory traveling to Palestine, I was eight years old. We were held at the border between Jordan and the West Bank. Bank as we were on our way to see my dad's family in Zababde. My parents were interrogated again and again. The soldiers searched through all of the contents of our suitcases. They ordered us all to be strip searched. My dad was livid. He confronted the soldiers and they started screaming at him and he started screaming at them. And I was terrified that they were gonna kill him, you know? So my dad stopped taking us back after that particular incident. And it took me 20 years to go back to Palestine on my own to make my very first short film. And then Dick Dark going back on my own regularly to build my own community there and become a part of the film community and make work. But I watched my father grow more and more disillusioned as time went on, as he's watching, you know, the deterioration of his homeland. He grew more and more heartbroken. He grew angrier and angrier. I watched my own identity form in opposition to that, you know, because I saw how much he suffered. I saw how much his anger impacted his health. He had a heart attack in his 50s. And I thought, I don't want to go down that road. I don't want to hold on to this anger. I don't want to hold on to the past. I want to find a different way. I want to look to the future. What can I do? There's just something that I can do. And I think that's one of the reasons why I really pursued filmmaking and storytelling and thought, what if, what if I told our stories? You know, with this particular film, I wanted to really look at how our identities sometimes form in relationship to our parents or grandparents or in opposition to them. You know, with my father and my grandfather, like I watched how different generations of this one Palestinian family all had different opinions about what was happening, what had happened, what should happen. You know, it was like all of these different generations of one Palestinian family all having radically different beliefs about Palestine. And it was just so interesting to me, you know, to see my grandfather and my father and hear their discourse and some of my aunts and uncles, and then to see how I would respond to that, kind of going the opposite way of my dad. I really wanted to explore that. And in some ways, my family had a level of privilege living in a village that was not often invaded. There aren't like horrific stories like there are in the very nearby village of Janine, for example. And my dad living in exile, it was incredible to me to see the emotional impact of events on him, even though he was so far away. And I just, having grown up in the US, surrounded by Western media and these horrible headlines that just totally dehumanized us and made us nameless, faceless numbers, I wanted to show and tell the story of how these political events that we've been reading about for decades have impacted us over time, how they've impacted all of these different generations differently, and how our identities have formed out of these events, how history has shaped who we are and has totally changed the fate and the fates of hundreds of thousands and today millions of families who are still living in the refugee camps.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

I think it's such an introspective way of looking at things, especially considering intergenerational trauma. And, you know, now we know the effects that has on people. I think our cities or, you know, our great-grandmothers, like they used to go through these really traumatic things and they would play it off. But then they would, you know, raise our mothers and then our mothers would raise us, and it's kind of all carried along. And when we really got back and do the work of healing, and we're like, okay, so this is where that's all stemming from. It just gives a deeper level of understanding when you really peel it all the way back. It sounds silly to us, but for everyone who thinks that this literally just started two years ago, I think it's a really good human way of of really showing that this has happened to our grandparents and our great-grandparents, and this is the effects that it's had on every family member since then.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Is a collective trauma for all of us, right? I mean, that trauma, whether our grandparents or parents, you know, survived the neck bit or or or not, whether they're, you know, whether we have ancestral stories from the necobit or, you know, is it 1948, is it 1967, is it something else that displaced and dispossessed us and and and you know changed the fate of our our of our entire existence? Yeah, there's the personal traumas and then, you know, there's the familial traumas and then there's the collective trauma.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Yeah, I mean, my grandparents weren't ECAB survivors and they were never even displaced from their village, but the effects of living under occupation are still very much there, like from imprisonment to health issues to restriction of movement. It's just so deeply systemic. And films like All That's Left of You, being an intergenerational film, really shine a light on how deep and systemic the occupation really is. Can you walk us through the process of filming All That's Left Of You?

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Yeah, we um I landed in Palestine in May of 2023, working with my local crew on the ground. Of course, I had like a handful of foreign crew arrive over the summer, and we, you know, spent months together location scouting, and you know, I cast every role in the film. We had amassed a giant warehouse of beautifully crafted, carefully curated props and set dressing from all of the different time periods. We actually had found a bus that was used in the neckbith in 1948 to actually transport people who were fleeing from their villages. We had just found these amazing, like historic relics, and you know, we were creating this thing together, and everyone was so excited to be working on this, you know, big historic Palestinian film that was going to show parts of our history that we'd never before seen in cinema. The rest of my foreign crew arrived on October 1st, 2023. We were finishing a prep and we were only two weeks away from shooting when October the 7th happened. Within moments, just the tension was so thick. Our production was based in Ramallah at the time. We had planned to shoot all over historic Palestine, from the West Bank to Historic Palestine. So from Ramallah, Jericho, Nables, Haifa, Jafa, Tel Avi, we were just gonna be shooting the film all over. West Bank towns were being sealed off and checkpoints were closing. There were rumors the border was gonna close. We were hearing fighter jets and like feeling the earth shake, and it was just a very, very tense few days. My foreign crew wanted to, of course, leave immediately. Their families were really worried. I think it was October the 9th where I started evacuating foreign crew. And it just became very clear we weren't gonna be able to move around and make the film there. So we decided to evacuate through Jordan and go to Cyprus, where we had always planned to shoot about 10% of the film. The plan was to shoot 90% in Palestine, 10% in Cyprus to shoot some of the bigger scenes that might be too risky to shoot in Palestine. So we went to Cyprus. The producers there were not ready for us, so we had to add week weeks of prep. I had always hoped to return to Palestine to, you know, to shoot what we had intended to shoot there. But as we know, the situation just escalated and escalated. And so I had to make a decision to go to Jordan. I did that because we all felt such a sense of urgency that the movie really needed to be made as soon as possible. And the situation was escalating so much that we that we couldn't see a time when we'd be able to return.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

Tot no, that makes total sense. I had already brought all of these pieces and people together and we had momentum. And I was like, I can either go now or I can put this on hold, and who knows if I'll get ever get to make the film. So we ended up going to Jordan. We shot more than 50% of the film there, mostly in the Palestinian refugee camps in the north of Jordan, which was great because we still got to work with the Palestinian refugee community in what is essentially the telling of their own story. And then we shot finally the last chapter of the film in Greece, in Athens and Drodis Islands. The making of the film is almost as epic as the film itself, you know, that the story of the making of. And it was tremendously challenging. I mean, we found ourselves looking for Palestine everywhere but Palestine, having to recreate Palestine outside of Palestine, which by the way is very expensive. The art department budget skyrockets. We had to reprep the entire film in Jordan and Greece. So that added weeks and weeks of pre-production. And, you know, again, the budget went up quite a bit. So we were always always trying to raise more money throughout the entire shoot. You know, we would have to stop shooting, raise money, figure out where to go, commence shooting again, stop shooting, raise more money, figure out where to go. I mean, it's crazy to make a movie in this way.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

I mean, it's quite ironic that you are trying to make a movie that shows the Palestinian experience, and you're literally living that exact Palestinian experience of 100%. We can't even tell our own stories. And like we don't even have that right and that dignity to be even able to share our own stories in the authentic way that we want to share them. It's like everything is made to be so difficult to just strip you of those resources that you have to even be able to share your own story. And so, I mean, I think that for sure led to a level of authenticity in your film. And that's probably why it's receiving the most amazing reviews. How does that make you feel knowing that all of your hard work with all that's left of you, the way that it's being received by the community?

SPEAKER_01 31:16

It's so beautiful. I feel tremendously grateful and fortunate to have this movie at this particular moment in time. We were making a movie about what was happening as it was happening. And now I'm taking that movie out into the world and it's still happening. We're making a movie about the neckbe and the ongoing neckbe as we're watching a much more catastrophic one unfold. It's been quite surreal. It's been art and life merging. It's been like the movie has lived what most Palestinians live war, exile. But I feel that the film has been such a gift to be able to pour myself into this and to know that I can take this out into the world and connect with audiences. And whether it's my own community who is both responding with tremendous emotion and grief at watching our history represented, but also joy at seeing ourselves represented and different moments of our history and our story actually being told for the first time. Or it's non-Palestinians, non-Arabs who are watching this and getting a total emotional education because there are so many things that they didn't know. And it's not that the movie educates you in this intellectual way. It's more of an emotional thing, right? It's more like, oh my God, I never thought about how that would emotionally impact people. I never thought about how the occupation must devastate and break people over time. That's what it's designed to do, right? It's designed to break us down. It's been so just gratifying and beautiful. And for me personally, it's helped me feel a little less helpless at this time.

SPEAKER_00 32:48

To be able to turn pain into purpose, I think is is so rewarding. That's right. Yeah. So much of Siddhi's stories really is rooted into the women who carried our stories and who were the original storytellers like our Siddhis. I would love for you to share about the women who were in your life that really inspired you to gain a larger sense of your Palestinian identity.

SPEAKER_01 33:11

I, you know, I would, I would really have to start with my mother, to be honest. And I there were so many matriarchs in my family, so many strong women, you know, women who just were powerful, really powerful. It's interesting because my first two films are about women and kind of breaking down the stereotypes of Arab women, you know. I think my mom was so proud of our Palestinian identity when we were younger, wanting to make sure that we were proud in general. Proud Palestinians, proud Arabs. I know that some Palestinians who come to the United States, some parents try to protect their kids by telling them, don't tell people you're Palestinian. My parents were the exact opposite. Tell everyone you're Palestinian. It was literally always the first thing that we told people. When I became a filmmaker, the first thing I always said when I walked into any room was that I'm Palestinian. I'm so grateful for that, to be so proud and to feel so fortunate that I'm part of this identity. You know, my parents drove my sisters and I through a refugee camp in Jordan when we were kids. And they said, look out the windows and look really closely. So we looked out the windows at, you know, these sort of cinder block homes with tin roofs and, you know, unpaved roads with mud and just puddles of water everywhere and flooding and kids playing, you know. And they said, this could have been you. And I I was quite young at the time. And I just that that statement has stayed with me my entire life. That could have been me. And why wasn't that me? And because that's not me, I have a responsibility to help to do something. Because for some reason, that's not me, but it could have been. And because it's not, I, you know, I left with this privilege. I have a responsibility. And that was essentially what my parents, I think, were communicating.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

Yeah. That's a great lesson to have, especially as a young child. Are there any traditions that your mom passed on to you that you still carry on till this day?

SPEAKER_01 35:04

Definitely like food, the making of our tradition of certain dishes. That was a big big one in our home, like rolling the grape leaves, making the national dish, which was one of my favorites, them sachan. And I think food was a really big one. My dad's side of the family, they're farmers. And so olive farming is a big part of it. And I've I've actually never gotten a chance to do the olive harvest, but have always wanted to. And that is just something I look so, so forward to. Um, but I feel like just wanting to put my hands in the earth, wanting to plant things, wanting to grow things, so much is from my father's side of the family, my grandfather and my dad. And you know, to this day, my dad has a garden where he plants like cucumbers and tomatoes and mint and parsley, and he will take you out into the garden and introduce you to every green leaf. Even in the small town in Ohio where he lives, he wants to introduce every tree and shrub in his yard. I love that so much. Like that tradition of just really loving the land and caring for the land and being close to the land, I think is something that though I've not gotten to experience it a lot, it's so much a part of who I am. And I'm just yearning for the time where I can really kind of express that side.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Yeah. Yeah. You can take a falahi person out of Palestine, but you can't ever take the falahi ness out of them. They'll always find a way to put that green thumb all around their house and even inspire it to other family members. I think that's a beautiful skill and lesson and tradition to pass on. And hopefully next October you'll be able to go and do the olive harvest and full of.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Inshallah. I was really planning on being there actually when I was making my film. I had planned on going to uh the olive harvest. My uncle goes every year to Zibabdit to um harvest the olives. So hopefully, hopefully soon I'll get to do that.

SPEAKER_00 36:49

Yeah, inshallah. Um, I would actually love if you can share with us a little bit about your city.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

I'm happy to say what little I know about her. Yeah. I I so wish that I knew more. I remember she was so beautiful and she had some of the traditional face tattoos. I I remember that very well about her. She passed when I was quite young, so I didn't really get to spend a lot of time with her. But I I just remember she had these long gray braids and she would sit on the swing outside of the house, my dad's, you know, house where he grew up in the village of Zababde. And, you know, my dad didn't even talk about her that much. My dad actually, I could almost never get my dad to talk about his upbringing in Palestine. Like I just think there's so much trauma within my dad's family that I could not get them to tell me stories. And I'm still trying, by the way. I do hope that one day I will be able to collect these stories. But it was always easier for them to tell other people's stories than to tell the stories of their own childhoods or upbringings. I think my my Sity in particular, I think she had quite a quite a traumatic childhood and life. And she was not well. When I met her and um and spent time with her in Zababde, and and the last time I remember seeing her, I was eight. That's the the image that's burned into my mind of her swinging on the swing with the long braids, and you know, she was she was not well. And so I think it's very painful even for my dad to talk about to this day, and there's just a lot that he he won't talk about when it comes to Palestine.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

Do you ever see pieces of your city or your grandfather in your creative process, thinking about them as like little characters or infusing their stories within your work?

SPEAKER_01 38:24

Yeah. So I the you know, the one thing I do remember about my city is she was very um, she was very quiet. And and my grandfather as well, my jiddo, was also very um calm. He had like the calmest way about him. He lived much longer. He lived to be 95, so I got to spend a lot more time with him. And I couldn't believe how peaceful he felt. He had a real calm about him, which is so interesting, right? Because my my dad definitely had a lot more anger than my my jiddo had. Um and I I sometimes feel like I channel my jiddo's calm in my creative process. That's the place from where I try to make decisions. That's a place that I try to find within myself in the creative chaos so that I can like really be in touch with my instinct and figure out kind of the path forward. And it's sort of within that calm that I connect with my ancestors. You know what I mean? It's like that's that spiritual place in my heart that I feel that I saw him in quite a lot. So I I I really love that. I my image of him is just like playing backgammon and being so just peaceful. And I just remember being like, how is he so peaceful? Where is he finding that that peace? I just it's it's really beautiful to think about.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

Yeah. I think I think a lot of our grandparents, you know, they go through so many things and they kind of always have the perspective of it'll always unfold the way that it needs to fold. Everything's meant to happen for a reason and everything will be okay at the end of things. And when we live in such a chaotic world where so much of us feel helpless and hopeless, I think you find solace in that calm and in that peace of knowing that everything will work out the way that it's supposed to work out. Yeah, there's almost like such a deep faith in that, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:08

It's like and and I think that maybe when you live a life that it where you're basically you're just you feel a lot of trauma, that very often we are looking for that faith in something bigger than us. You know what I mean? That meaning. You know, we're looking for that larger meaning of why we're here and why we're experiencing all of this suffering. It's in that that I think sometimes we find that calm, that peace, that feeling of, well, I'm just gonna have to trust that it's all gonna unfold the way it's meant to unfold. I do feel like a lot of our people have that.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Yeah, that steadfastness. I mean, that I think that's what we've seen unfold for the last two years of, you know, the people of Ghaza being, you know, these like unbreakable people. How how are they able to, you know, still kind of stand up and move on and live their life like with all the atrocities that they're experiencing? They have the greatest faith that of all of us that, you know, that's what we could wish to and aspire to have.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

Absolutely. I mean, I find it incredibly inspiring. And yeah, I think we could all learn from that.

SPEAKER_00 41:09

I I always love this portion of Sitti stories just because I I feel like we don't get to sit enough with this topic, what our parents had to go through, what our grandparents had to go through, and how it shapes each one of our, you know, generations. It's so interesting to see that you even get so much from your grandfather and like how you know he inspires your creative processes. Uh every creative journey, especially one rooted in truth. I'm gonna go beyond that you're a storyteller, I think you're a truth teller, um, comes with its own peaks and valleys. Uh, what have been the toughest moments that you've had to face like throughout your career or just this last couple of years?

SPEAKER_01 41:48

Yeah, I think by far the last couple of years have been some of the most challenging of my career. Making this movie was such a massive undertaking. Um, it was a massive undertaking even before we went through everything we went through. But then, you know, to go through uh fleeing war and exile and having to make this movie in a time of total crisis, you know, in a logistical and financial crisis, and then during a genocide. I think that it was one of the most emotionally draining things I've ever experienced as well. You know, I wrote, directed, and act in, and, you know, was like one of the only producers on the ground. It was a tremendous amount of responsibility. And I think we were just channeling so much grief as we were making it, you know, and we were living it. We were like making this movie about what's happening as it's happening. So we're literally living it. We're living the whole thing. You know, some days we were shooting images that looked an awful lot like the images that were coming across our social media feeds, you know, the images that were coming out of Razze. It was like really one of the most physically and emotionally taxing experiences of my life. But like I said, I think it was also one of the biggest gifts of my life to be able to create at such a time of destruction and to have this movie as a container for all of our grief. It was a huge lesson in many ways. Until they made this movie, I'm not sure that I was willing to recognize how racist the system is and how much the system is just not ever gonna let us in. I really do think the last two years have just been such a massive turning point. I feel empowered about it now, but that all came out of some big low points, like really low low points, where just the disappointment I felt, you know, to have worked so hard to make this movie and then to get it to one of the top film festivals in the world where the programmers were so excited about the film, they gave us the hottest slot of the festival. We had a packed theater of 1200 people, you know, multiple standing ovations, incredible reviews, very emotional screening where people were sobbing in the theater. People came up to me sobbing in my arms afterwards. The movies connecting with audience members in such a visceral way. But then to have every mainstream American distributor essentially. Turn it down and say that they were quote afraid of the subject matter. I think was one of the low points of my career.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:07

The mask came off of a lot of people the last two years. That's a hundred percent right. Yeah, I think it was um like this painful truth that came to light. Not that we were ignoring it, but maybe some of us were not fully understanding the extent of it. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, all it was an all gloves or off moment where it was like, oh I'm I'm being really faced with this and I'm seeing the full extent of it now. And I really had a moment where I was like, I'm I'm either gonna retire from filmmaking and reinvent myself, or I'm going to just build my own studio and totally become self-sufficient.

SPEAKER_00 44:45

Do you have any plans of building your own studio? I am working on something. Well, there you go. Because I think it's it's natural and totally valid for us to step away to protect our own selves, you know? But I for the movement forward for a community, it's crucial for us to have things of our own, you know. I'm really excited to see what that looks like for you. But on the flip side of things, what have been the most affirming and kind of grounding moments that really make you feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be?

SPEAKER_01 45:18

I've had so many of those beautiful moments. I really have. I mean, during the making of this film and now during the taking of this film out into the world, I've been to so many screenings where the film has connected so deeply with audience members. I I feel so grateful that I'm like, I am exactly where I'm supposed to be. You know, this film is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. It's opening people's hearts in a way that I don't even know I fully allowed myself to imagine. It was like maybe only in my wildest dreams. We've won 19 awards, including 10 audience awards, which is huge. You know, the audience awards as a filmmaker, those are those are our favorite awards because it means that the film is connecting with audiences. And that's exactly why we make films. We make films for audiences. We make films in the hopes that our our our stories, our films connect to people's hearts and and to know that that's what's happening and to see it happen, like right before my eyes. You know, we just had an amazing screening last night at the Museum of the Moving Image here in Queens. And it was a sold-out screening, 276 seats, standing ovation. So beautiful. The comments that I get afterwards are just so moving. It's clear that people are really moved by the film. And so I feel really just grateful to have it. I feel like the movie is a movement, it's creating a movement, and I'm on the ride. I'm here to service the movement at this point through the film. I'm servicing the movement. And really that's the way that I see it. Even the moments where I'm exhausted. If it was any other film, if I had made a romantic comedy, I'd be ready to kind of tap out, if you know what I mean. Given that I have something that I really think is moving the needle and can move the needle in a in a much bigger way, as long as we're able to get it seen in a big way, that's what keeps me going. And that's what makes me feel tireless, willing to just work night and day to get this thing out into the world and make sure that as many people as possible see it.

SPEAKER_00 47:11

But definitely adds kind of a re-energizing factor when you see how much movement it's really creating. Um, has there been a specific story or comment that you know you heard from an audience member that has really touched you and stayed with you?

SPEAKER_01 47:24

I mean, there have been a few. I would highlight a number of people have said this movie broke my heart and then put it back together again, which I really love. And I feel like the movie ends on a bit of a hopeful note. It's a bit of a bittersweet, hopeful note. And it's hard to have hope right now. And so the fact that people are feeling that from the film, I think is important. I think we need that right now. We need hope to keep going. That is how we keep going. And so I'm really happy to hear that. I've heard people say, I didn't know. I didn't know, I didn't know. People who had no idea the history, they didn't know the Nekaba. They didn't know what Palestinians, you know, had been through in 1948 and what they're still going through, the fact that it started then and has continued until now, only escalating and escalating. I've had people say to me, You shifted my entire perspective. I'm I'm gonna go home and rethink everything I've ever been taught. And then I've had people say something else that I think is really beautiful and and really necessary to think about right now, which is you've made me think about my own anger and how I might be able to channel it into something of use, into something empowering for our community, because there's so many reasons for us to be full of rage, you know, at all of the injustices that we endured and suffered. But I didn't want to leave people with that feeling. I wanted to um, I wanted to try to find some kind of meaning in all of this suffering, you know, for my own self, for my own healing, you know, as someone who has a level of privilege and feels like, you know, I'm not in the direct line of of danger or violence. Like therefore, it is it is my responsibility to try to heal and make sure that any anger that I have is channeled into some kind of an action that I can take for my community so that I can be a benefit because anger has never helped anyone. Growing up with my dad, I saw how much anger, you know, made him suffer and and made his health suffer. And so I I didn't want that. And I don't want that for our community. And so for people to watch the film and kind of realize look, if we're, if, if our hearts are full of rage and hatred, then we're exactly where they want us to be. Then we are basically doing their job for them. They're killing us over there and they're killing us over here. It's a really important message for our community, right? Choosing life, choosing humanity despite what they're doing to us is truly an act of resistance right now. It truly is because they want us full of rage. That's how they dehumanize us, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:50

So I and I it's a it's a much more difficult road to take to work through our own feelings of devastation and rage and pain right now, you know. But I personally feel the responsibility to do that. And so when people take that message away from the film, I think that it's I think that that's really powerful.

SPEAKER_00 50:07

Yeah. I I think anger at its core is unresolved grief. As Palestinians, we we carry that so heavily on our shoulders. The only way out of it is to really work through it and to do something purposeful with all of that. I love that's that that that's the effect that the film is having on people, that realization. Um, because I think so much more can be achieved once you kind of work through that process.

SPEAKER_02 50:31

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 50:33

Before we wrap up, I usually ask what's next for you. But you you have been tirelessly working. But what is next for you in terms of all that's left of you? And what's the rest of the process of rolling it out look like?

SPEAKER_01 50:46

Well, the film has uh had a just a very rich festival run, starting with Sundance and uh then going to Telluride and Carla Vivari and a bunch of other really amazing festivals. It's been released in a handful of countries from Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands. It's currently out in theaters in Germany and Turkey, and it will continue to roll out in in the coming year. In the United States, it's going to be released on January 9th, starting in New York, uh, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and then kind of expanding nationwide in the weeks to follow. And I have just dedicated myself entirely to taking this movie out into the world, like anywhere I need to go. You know, I've I've maybe turned down a small handful of opportunities just to preserve my own physical health. And I have said yes to almost everything in order to just really like handhold this film out into the world and hope that it gets seen as widely as possible. I just think it's that important because it's hitting at such a vital time. So that's really what's next for me and for the film for the next six months is just taking it out, you know, the US, the UK, Spain, France, Belgium, all of these cu uh countries that are releasing and then the Arab world. So I really, I really hope that I can help shepherd it out into all of these different Yeah, I keep looking out for Chicago dates.

SPEAKER_00 52:01

I'm like, when is it gonna be Chicago? I I want to say January 16th. Awesome. Yeah, I'll keep my calendar notifications on. How can we support your work and follow along with everything to do with all that's left of you? Well, thank you for asking.

SPEAKER_01 52:15

You can follow me on uh social media, but uh particularly Instagram and the film at all that's left of you film. So that's one way to kind of keep up. I've started a distribution company, so it's sort of the beginning of what I hope will one day be an artist-driven distribution company and studio called Visibility Films. I have a website, visibilityfilms.com, where you could sign up for my newsletter to just keep up with all of the news of what we're doing with this film and of course in the future as I as I build this company and hopefully uh a self-sustaining kind of business model for filmmakers and storytellers.

SPEAKER_00 52:55

Yeah, that's going to be so amazing to see unfold. Um, and it's I think it's extremely needed. We're so excited to follow you along the journey. Before we close, we always like to end the way that we started with a sitti-inspired question. So if your sitti was here with us today, or your Sido drinking their shea, having their cigarette, um, and listening in on our conversation, what do you think they would be the most proud of you for? Question just brings a huge smile to my face.

SPEAKER_01 53:23

Oh my gosh. I I imagine there would be a lot of tears and just a lot of pride about telling our story, about honoring the Palestinian people by telling this story. Yeah, I think I think really as simple as that, as simple as just the the telling of the story and sharing it with the world.

SPEAKER_00 53:41

If they watched the film, what do you think they would have said?

SPEAKER_01 53:44

I think there'd be a lot of emotion. Uh, I think there'd be a lot of tears, and then there probably would be a joke. Something like, you know, why did you torture yourself? Why did you torture yourself?

SPEAKER_00 53:54

Telling our, you know, our incredibly devastating, sad story. Yeah. Yeah. There's always a way to kind of put humor in there. Yeah. Always at the end of it.

SPEAKER_01 54:03

Yeah, the dihalik. Yeah. You know, it'd be something like that.

SPEAKER_00 54:08

They would be like yelling at me with love. Yeah. That sounds that sounds perfect. Exactly. Well, Shereen, thank you so much for sharing your story and your Siddhi story. And we just really appreciate as a community. I will even go as far to, you know, speak on community. And uh we appreciate the work that you do and the films that you, you know, bring to life. I just genuinely appreciate your time. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 54:33

Thank you for having me. It was such a pleasure. And you've inspired me to like just keep asking those questions and get more information about my own uh Siddhi.

SPEAKER_00 54:42

Yeah, that would be great. I understand our fathers, they carry so much anger and grief within them that it's so hard for them to talk about. So even if it's finding another way in there, like if there was like an older neighbor that you could speak to, I learned so much from other elderly Siddhis in the community about my own grandmother. And so, yeah, I just encourage everyone to really grasp these stories and document them. Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:06

Well, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Sharine's work reminds us what's possible when grief is turned into creation, when anger is shaped into purpose, and when communities refuse to wait for permission to be seen. I hope you're leaving this conversation feeling inspired and reminded that we have a responsibility to tell our own stories, to document them, preserve them, and share them. I encourage you all to watch the film All That's Left of You, which is screening in theaters across the United States starting this January. I've linked showtimes and ticket information in the episode description below, and also where you could follow along with Sharin's journey as well as the films. As always, you can keep up with us on Instagram at sitties.stories and sign up for the all press newsletter at cittiesstories.com. This is Sithis Stories, where we honor the ones who came before us and carry their voices forward. Until next time, ma salama