★★★★☆
There’s a quiet confidence to All That’s Left of You that immediately sets it apart from most films tackling the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Written, directed, and co-starring Cherien Dabis, the film resists the urge to lecture. It trusts the audience to sit inside the lived experience of a Palestinian family and draw their own conclusions.
The result is a carefully balanced and very human portrait of generational trauma, survival, and identity.
All That’s Left of You follows three generations of men shaped by displacement but is equally anchored by the women who carry memory, grief, and continuity. The story unfolds across multiple timelines: 1948, 1978, 1988, and 2022, moving fluidly between eras without ever feeling disjointed.
That temporal structure is one of the film’s greatest strengths. It allows the audience to feel how history is not past, but present, embedded in the body, behaviour, and relationships of each generation.
The first generation introduces us to Salim (Saleh Bakri), a man rooted in land, family, and tradition. His life in Jaffa, depicted with warmth through the orange orchard and family life, is shattered by forced displacement.
The loss is just as much existential as it is physical. This opening act is heartbreaking in its simplicity: a family removed from their home at gunpoint, their future abruptly rewritten. It sets the emotional tone for everything that follows.
The second generation, centred around Sharif (Adam Bakri, with an older version played by Mohammad Bakri), captures life in the refugee camps of the West Bank. Here, the film subtly shifts from immediate trauma to prolonged endurance. Sharif’s experience is defined by humiliation, particularly in moments involving Israeli soldiers, and the quiet erosion of dignity that comes with occupation.
One of the most affecting elements of this section is how the film observes the father-son dynamic; how shame and powerlessness are silently transmitted. The son witnesses his father’s suffering, and that psychological inheritance becomes just as significant as any physical displacement.
The third generation brings us to Noor (Muhammad Abed Elrahman), a boy whose life is cut short in a moment that is both sudden and tragically inevitable.
His story is perhaps the most devastating because of its randomness. He joins a protest he barely understands, only to be shot. This moment captures something essential about the conflict: how ordinary life is constantly interrupted by forces beyond individual control.
The aftermath, which sees his mother Hanan (Cherien Dabis) navigating grief and the decision around organ donation, is handled with remarkable restraint and complexity.
The moral dilemma surrounding Noor’s organs is one of the film’s most thought-provoking threads. The family’s fear – that his organs might go to someone who could later harm Palestinians – perfectly encapsulates the cyclical nature of mistrust and trauma.
The intervention of the Imam, guiding them toward saving lives, introduces a rare moment of clarity and humanity. It’s framed as a choice toward compassion in a context that rarely rewards it.
One of the most powerful scenes, and arguably the film’s thesis, comes at the end, when Hanan meets the Israeli man who received her son’s heart. It’s a quietly devastating exchange.
She wants him to feel the weight of generations of Palestinian suffering, while he implicitly carries his own inherited trauma. Neither can fully access the other’s pain.
That emotional stalemate becomes a microcosm of the broader conflict: two sides shaped by grief, each waiting for recognition from the other before healing can begin.
What makes this scene exceptional is its restraint. There is no dramatic resolution. No forced reconciliation. Just an uncomfortable, deeply human impasse. It’s here that the film’s writing truly shines.
Visually, the film is stunning. Cinematographer Christopher Aoun crafts images that are intimate and expansive. Each time period is distinct without becoming stylised to the point of distraction.
The compositions are precise, often framing characters within doorways, windows, or landscapes that emphasise both belonging and confinement. The sense of place is constant. You feel the land as something tangible. Something lost. Something remembered.
The production design, costumes, hair, and makeup deserve particular recognition. Each era is meticulously realised, and grounds the film in authenticity. There’s a lived-in quality that makes you believe you are witnessing real lives rather than constructed drama.
Performance-wise, the film operates as a true ensemble. What’s particularly impressive is how naturalistic the acting feels. It never tips into melodrama, even in the most emotionally charged moments. You genuinely feel like a fly on the wall, observing rather than being told how to feel.
Saleh Bakri brings a quiet gravitas to Salim. Adam Bakri captures the internal conflict of a man caught between resilience and resignation. Mohammad Bakri’s portrayal of the older Sharif adds a layer of reflection and accumulated pain that ties the generational arc together.
Maria Zreik as Munira provides emotional grounding, while Dabis herself delivers a restrained, deeply felt performance as Hanan.
Importantly, the film achieves something rare: it presents a distinctly Palestinian perspective without reducing itself to political messaging. As Dabis has stated, the film is deeply personal and profoundly intimate rather than overtly political.
That intention is clear in the final product. Politics exist because they must; they shape the characters’ lives, but they are never the point. The point is people.
For many viewers, the film will also challenge preconceived notions. The depiction of displacement, particularly in 1948, confronts the idea that the land was empty or uninhabited. Instead, we see established families, communities, and livelihoods disrupted.
Whether or not one is familiar with the historical context, the film grounds these events in personal experience rather than abstract history.
With a two and a half hour run time, the film never drags. The pacing is deliberate yet fluid, allowing each era to breathe without overstaying its welcome. The transitions between timelines are seamless, reinforcing the idea that these stories are interconnected rather than separate.
If there’s anything the film adds, it’s the concept of “post-memory.” This idea, that later generations live under the shadow of memories they didn’t directly experience, runs through every frame of the film. It explains the characters’ behaviour and the emotional inheritance passed from grandfather to father to son. The trauma is remembered. It is lived.
All That’s Left of You doesn’t attempt to solve the conflict, and it knows it can’t. What it does instead is far more valuable: it creates space for empathy. It shows ordinary people trying to build lives, raise families, and find dignity in circumstances that constantly undermine those efforts.
By focusing on the human cost rather than the political argument, the film achieves a rare balance. It invites you to step into another perspective, not to agree, but to understand. And in a conflict defined by a lack of mutual recognition, that might be the most powerful contribution cinema can make.
All That’s Left of You opens in select cinemas nationally from 9 April 2026. See below for details.
Website: https://allthatsleftofyou.au/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/culturalmedia.au/ and https://www.instagram.com/palestinianfilmfestival/
Watch the trailer here:
Film details:
Title: All That’s Left of You
Director: Cherien Dabis
Cast: Saleh Bakri, Adam Bakri, Mohammad Bakri, Maria Zreik, Cherien Dabis
Countries of Origin: Germany, Cyprus, Palestine, Jordan, Greece, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United States, Egypt
Duration: 145 mins
Check cinema websites for session times:
Sydney – Dendy Newtown
Melbourne – Cinema Nova
Brisbane – Dendy Coorparoo
Gold Coast – HOTA Cinema
Perth – Luna Leederville
Adelaide – Palace Nova East End
Canberra – Dendy Canberra
Hobart – State Cinema
