‘One day, it will end’: Palestinian twin brothers Arab and Tarzan Nasser on Once Upon a Time in Gaza and resistance through cinema and culture

At one point in Once Upon a Time in Gaza, characters in the film are shooting a publicity video for a fictionalised hero of the Palestinian resistance.

The director in the scene tells the crew: “You can resist with weapons, but also with images.”

In this meta-narrative — in which a film within a film recounts the resilience of people in Gaza — comes the crux of the new film by twin brothers Arab and Tarzan Nasser: that resistance comes in many forms, and culture is one of them.

“Weapons are one type of resistance. But ultimately, all of Gaza, all Palestinians there, resist. This is their cause since 1948 until now," a passionate Arab tells The New Arab just after his film’s premiere in Cannes.

“And they never give up, never surrender. They always continue, and they will continue until they get their rights back.”

Resisting inhuman situations and conditions

Once Upon a Time in Gaza screened last week at the 78th Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section — featuring films from across the world — and, on 25 May, won the Best Directing Award to rapturous applause and reviews.

At the awards ceremony, the jury said: “We are deeply moved by the title, which dares name an unfathomable and deliberately obscured present. The name of a land and its people undergoing genocide.”

This latest success adds to the Nasser brothers’ growing legacy at Cannes. Born in 1988, they were the first Palestinian directors to screen a short film at the festival with Condom Lead in 2013, which explored how Gazans find love and intimacy amid Israeli attacks.

Then, in 2015, their first feature, Dégradé — set in a Gaza beauty salon and starring Hiam Abbass — premiered in the Semaine de la Critique side-section.

Building on this success, they then gained wider acclaim with their second feature, Gaza Mon Amour, a dry-witted romantic film also set in Gaza with Hiam, which screened at both the Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals in 2020.

Their new film once again draws inspiration from Gaza. This time, Once Upon a Time in Gaza takes the form of a vintage 1960s-style Spaghetti Western, both in genre and structure, with clear titular references to Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America.

Like many Westerns — notably The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, also directed by Sergio Leone — the Nassers’ film centres around three main charismatic characters.

First, there is Osama, played with grit by Majd Eid, who owns a falafel shop and acts as a clandestine drug dealer. His accomplice is the shy student Yahya, played by Nader Abd Alhay. Finally, a corrupt cop trying to get in their way is played by Ramzi Maqdisi.

The film is structured into two chapters: the first set mainly at the falafel shop following Osama, and the second focusing on Yahya’s transition into acting as a symbol of Palestinian resistance, embodying a soldier who becomes a martyr, or Shaheed.

Arab tells The New Arab that he and his brother began developing the concept for the film back in 2015, continuing their legacy of making films about “the human being, the daily life in Gaza, how they live, how they resist under inhuman situations and inhuman conditions… inside a prison closed from all over.”

'Half my mind is always in Gaza' 

According to the brothers, they chose to set the film in 2007, a critical period when Israel imposed a full blockade on the movement of people and goods in and out of the Gaza Strip. 

Filming began much later, in October 2024, in Jordan — around a year after the 7 October 2023 attacks that triggered Israel’s full-scale genocide in Gaza.

Arab recalls how “horrible” it was to shoot in these conditions. “Half my mind is always in Gaza,” he says. Both he and his brother were born and raised in Gaza and only left in 2012, and they still have many family members there. “At any moment we can get bad news,” he adds.

In saying this, Arab notes that the film directly engages with themes of resistance and martyrdom, which are central to Palestinian culture. Throughout the film, there are constant references to the struggle against Israel — whether it’s the loud drones circling the sky or a humorous scene where an actor playing an Israeli officer in a publicity video refuses to step on a Palestinian flag.

Although the film owes many influences to classic Spaghetti Westerns from the sixties, Arab emphasises that their true and constant inspiration remains their hometown of Gaza.

“The only inspiration for our film is Gaza. The characters, the city is Gaza,” Arab says. “We believe that the Palestinian in general, and the Gazan especially, know what the meaning of life is, because they don't have life. They don't have the luxury of other nations supporting them. But they create that life, and they never give up.”

Holding on to hope 

Speaking about critics in the West who might perceive his film as pro-resistance or pro-Hamas, Arab affirms that he is unafraid.

“It’s the most violent genocide in modern history, yet journalists still make excuses for Israel, claiming they are defending themselves,” he says.

At the same time, although Arab believes it is important for Palestinian cinema to be represented at major festivals like Cannes — especially with a film that directly addresses resistance — he has no illusions that art or cinema can change anything or stop wars.

“It’s bullshit to think that art can change things. If the videos coming out of Gaza every day don’t move people’s humanity — even just to speak out against them — my film… it will change nothing. I don’t want to give more importance to it. We are doing cinema for cinema,” he says.

He adds, “We stopped [shooting] for maybe five months, then when we decided to go back to work. We realised that this is the best film that we can introduce now, because it gives you a background about life before 7 October, how Gazans are living in inhuman, horrible conditions, and how they resist all the time to survive.”

Although the atmosphere in Cannes was clearly heavy for Palestinians and others in attendance — as news of famine and destruction in Gaza continues to come in — a film like this one, produced by Rashid Abdelhamid, the father of Saint Levant (who attended the premiere), still meant something special, and reaffirmed how culture and cinema can be forms of resistance.

Once Upon a Time in Gaza starts with the sombre voice-over of US President Donald Trump’s speech last February, in which he envisioned Gaza as “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

But it ends on a somewhat hopeful note, and a vow to remain steadfast and resilient, with large words taking over the screen, written both in Arabic and English:

“One day, it will end.”

[Cover photo: Photography by Gabrielle Denisse]

Alexander Durie is a journalist working across video, photography, and feature writing. He has freelanced for The Guardian, Al Jazeera English, The Economist, The Financial Times, Reuters, The Independent, and more, contributing dispatches from Paris, Berlin, Beirut, and Warsaw

Follow him on Instagram: @alexander.durie