For those wondering what life in Palestine looks like, Condom Lead (2013), directed by Palestinian twins Arab and Tarzan Nasser, offers a striking visual metaphor: The short film opens with an apartment full of balloons, drawing the viewer in. But the scripted work takes place during the first Gaza War in 2008 and 2009. Why are there so many balloons in this house during a war, when there is no celebration occurring?
That night, we see the residents of the house, a married couple, as they try to have sex. They draw toward each other, softly touching feet and thighs, but they are interrupted by the sound of bombs, which makes their infant cry. The husband then takes a condom, blows it up, and lets it float through the apartment wherever it may land — on the floor, on the bookcase, on their child. We realize this is his compulsion, a coping technique, a way of keeping score of what is taken from them.
Over the last seven weeks, life in Gaza has been quite literally unimaginable. Following the October 7 attacks by Hamas that killed 1,200 Israelis and Israel’s subsequent siege of Gaza with its 13,000 Palestinian deaths, there have been intermittent communications blackouts in the territory. The siege has meant Palestinians are contending with a full-blown humanitarian crisis, including attacks on refugee camps and hospitals and increased violence in the West Bank. Even knowing all that, communication failures and incredible challenges for journalists mean there is so much we don’t know.
This story, however, did not begin in October 2023; the roots of the conflict reach much further back. By understanding what came before, and what everyday life looks like for people, couples, and families under occupation, we can add to our understanding of what’s happening now and how we got here. A selection of short films, all easily available on Netflix, from Palestinian directors can give viewers outside the region a sense of the alienation, oppression, and human…
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