‘From Ground Zero’ Review — Palestine’s Oscar submission is a haunting plea for help

A review of the new film, in select theaters now

We’re living in quite the period of global instability, and in many ways, it feels like it’s all about to get a whole lot worse. In 2024, world cinema grappled with numerous unfolding crises, with many filmmakers creating urgent works of art that function as pleas for help, for people to wake up and pay attention to what’s happening around us… and what’s still coming. Asif Kapadia’s docu-fiction hybrid 2073 is one such film, stitching together modern narratives about surveillance, genocide, techno-billionaire fascists, and more in an effort to imagine how they might all soon come to a head. Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig is another; it’s a work so politically urgent that its Iranian director had to shoot it in secret, and he now lives in exile.

From Ground Zero, Palestine’s submission to the upcoming Academy Awards, is a collection of 22 short films created by people living in Gaza. As they experience a genocide — as they live among the destruction of their homeland and witness the mass death of their loved ones — these filmmakers have found a way to make movies. There are segments about the power of dance and music, shorts that grapple with the soul-shattering horror of knowing a…