Mohamed Jabaly

From the very first day of Israel-Gaza conflict in 2014, filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly has been there with his camera. He follows a team of paramedics in an ambulance, eventually becoming a core member who bears witness to their perilous and heartbreaking rescue work. Ambulance tracks the harrowing chaos amidst a state-run military operation on civilians.

Palestinian filmmaker Mohamed Jabalay is on a month long work trip to Norway when the Egypt/Gaza border closes and he is unable to return home. He details his seven year fight to get back to his family, during which time he made his award-winning film, Ambulance.

Living in Norway, filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly stays connected to his family in Gaza through a fragile internet connection, turning that digital space into a deeply personal lens on distance, conflict, and belonging.

As a Palestinian living in diaspora in one of the Lofoten islands in northern Norway, we lived as Palestinians under greater adversities, and under periods of curfew and block-ade that was imposed on us which were harsher than those the world is now living. The pandemic has become a real accumulation of events that we have witnessed over the past years, and the real pandemic that we are living under occupation.

A mixed media animation film about people, human resistance, and the will to exist. It's about a city that keeps maintaining itself, like the phoenix that cyclically regenerates and obtains new life by arising from the ashes of its predecessor. A city that keeps growing despite the fact of war, searching for hope to exist and for a better future.

Stitched from the artist's own clothes, a fragile tent becomes a haunting memorial for Gaza, and a powerful symbol for people who are still living in tents over the rubble of their destroyed homes.