Asmahan Bkerat's Concrete Land captures a Palestinian Bedouin family's disappearing homeland

For eight years, Palestinian-Jordanian filmmaker Asmahan Bkerat followed a Palestinian Bedouin family as the land beneath their lives was gradually swallowed by concrete.

What began as a friendship eventually turned into Concrete Land, her debut feature documentary, created from more than 400 hours of footage and two years of editing.

The film, which was recently presented at the Critics' Week section of the Locarno Film Festival, follows three generations confronting displacement, contested identity and the disappearance of the landscape that has anchored their lives.

Originally Afro-Palestinian Bedouins from the Negev Desert, the family was displaced from Palestine after Israeli occupation and eventually settled in Jordan, where they continued their traditional life as shepherds and farmers.

Along the journey, their situation remains precarious, caught between Palestinian and Jordanian identities, Bedouin tradition and urban development, and memories of a homeland and an uncertain future.

For Asmahan, the story is about what happens long after displacement, when exile has passed but the question of where and how to belong remains unresolved.

"Once you lose your land and home, you lose a big part of yourself," she tells ​​​​​​The New Arab. "And it's devastating."

Asmahan did not initially set out to become a documentary filmmaker. With a background in business information systems, and while working as a photographer and social-justice advocate, she spent years listening, observing, and returning to her family, which eventually led her to find her direction behind the camera.

Her first short documentary, Badrya (2017), won the Jury Prize for Best MiniDoc at the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival.

She subsequently developed Concrete Land as her first feature, with support from organisations and programmes including IDFA, Sundance, and Doha Film Institute.

"I think I learned how to become a filmmaker through this film," she adds. 

A minority within a minority

The family's community, once isolated from Amman, is now surrounded by the city's expansion. Yet moving further away is not a simple solution, as proximity to the city means access to education for the younger generation.

"If they remove themselves, if they get away from the city, they lose access to the school," Asmahan explains. "And they're trying to keep access to the school for the children."

Their Palestinian Bedouin identity further complicates access to land, leaving them outside the structures through which Jordanian Bedouin communities have historically accessed it.

Israel's current war in Gaza added another dimension. Part of the extended family fled there after being displaced from Palestine, while another branch ended up in Jordan.

"Unfortunately, they lost their family in Gaza; a big part of it is gone," Asmahan explains.

For the younger generation, the war sharpened their understanding of their own history.

"The war changes children's awareness," she explains. "They start to understand what it means to be Palestinian, to be a refugee, to be attached to a homeland that does not exist."

That raises a question extending beyond this family.

"Refugee stories are abundant," Asmahan continues. "There are so many refugees every single day. But we don't know what happens to them. Who asks, did you integrate into society? Were you able to get a good life?"

A friendship before a film

When Asmahan first met the family, she wasn't looking for a documentary subject. She had previously lived near the area and one day drove out of Amman with her colleague Ban Maraqa, who would later become the film’s co-producer, editor and co-writer.

"Amman is such a crowded city," Asmahan recalls. "It's like this. No space, no air, nothing."

Looking for somewhere to have tea and coffee, they saw an old woman walking with her sheep. "We were like, ‘Oh my god, what is this? How is there an old woman and the sheep walking?’ It was so unusual."

They approached her and were invited into her tent. "We were very surprised because we didn't see the tents at first. It was just the big white buildings. And as we walked, the building separated, and we saw the tents."

At the time, Asmahan had little understanding of documentary filmmaking. "I wasn't a filmmaker," she says. "I was interested in film. But I had no idea what a documentary film was. Observation, nothing, zero."

The relationship came first. "It was a friendship before it was a film," she confirms.

When the construction arrived

The project began as a nine-minute short, but its direction changed when construction started around the family’s land.

"When the construction started, we went to the guy who was building, and we said, 'Are you okay with the family here? Or are you going to ask them to leave?'" Asmahan recalls.

The answer was that they would have to go. "So my colleague Ban and I approached the family: ‘How about we just film what’s happening? Maybe it will change something. We can at least document where you were and where you’re going to end up.’"

Asmahan met the family in 2016, made the short in 2017 and began shooting Concrete Land in 2018. The filmmakers eventually accumulated more than 400 hours of footage.

"I think I can make an entire series out of the material that I have," Asmahan jokes. "Because I was there constantly. I was almost there four times a week for years. And if I wasn't there, Ban would replace me.

"We had a room full of storage just for the material of the film, much more than needed," she clarifies. "The film is purely observational, with no staged events."

Asmahan discovered that an observational documentary could use the dramatic structure of fiction.

"The idea of structuring a documentary film like a fiction one was a completely foreign idea to me," she explains. "I had no idea that it was possible. And that documentary film could follow the rules of fiction in the editing."

Ban helped organise the archive. "We had a huge Excel sheet, organising the material by date, name, character and event." From there, Ban built the film's three-act structure.

"Sometimes we would say, okay, we have something missing here. Maybe we should shoot a family conversation or have some elements that are complementary to what we have right now."

The meaning of lost land

The grandfather – the oldest family member whom we encounter yet in the melancholic opening – gradually emerged as the film's emotional centre, although Asmahan initially found him difficult to approach.

"I was scared of him at the beginning," she admits. "I was not approaching him as we were mutually avoiding each other."

Over time, the camera became a space where he could express feelings he struggled to communicate elsewhere.

"He found an escape in the camera, like a place for him to vent his feelings. Because he thought, like, nobody was listening to him. And nobody wants to be around him," Asmahan elaborates.

His attachment to his sheep became central to understanding him. They represent his livelihood, purpose and connection to a disappearing way of life.

"His purpose in life was the sheep; he cannot live without them," Asmahan says. "He wanted to get more sheep and be with them and graze them. But that was taken away from him."

When the sheep are lost, so is something larger. For Asmahan, his story became a metaphor for the loss of land and Palestine, the meaning of land and the relationship to the land: "He reflects Palestine most, in a way, for me."

The sheep also became an unlikely source of humour during editing. "How do you keep the sheep? Because in many, many cuts, we lost the sheep and spent a lot of time to bring them back."

The humour is part of the film’s refusal to reduce the family to suffering. Everyday life remains alongside displacement and loss, despite the deliberately slow pace.

Concrete against land

The title brings together the film’s opposing forces. "Land is something that's living," Asmahan says. "And concrete is dead."

Around the family, that transformation has become increasingly stark. "There's no greenery. There are no parks. Nothing. It's a very dry land."

Asmahan remains particularly critical of the destruction of agricultural areas in Jordan: "Jordan is one percent forest. And all of it is desert. And the government wants to destroy agricultural land. What are they even thinking?"

The Arabic title, Tiyaha, adds another layer: "It refers to people who are lost. Who can find no place to belong to."

A camera built on trust

The family’s openness to the camera was essential to the film. Asmahan believes it stemmed from their sense of making it together.

"All the members were amazing," she tells The New Arab. "I think it’s because it was a collaborative decision to make the film together. So they were part of the decision process."

With time, the camera has integrated into everyday life. The grandmother particularly embraced it: "She loves the camera," Asmahan shares. "She and her sheep, they're divas."

The grandfather, initially the most difficult to approach, eventually became "the most accessible" family member.

That trust allowed Asmahan and Ban to capture change without staged scenes or conventional interviews: construction, ageing, family tensions, loss and shifts in the younger generation's understanding of Palestine.

A sense of home and community

Asmahan is now producing two films and developing her next feature, which will again explore displacement, this time through the lens of an Indigenous community in southern Jordan.

"I care about what it means to have a home, identity, and displacement. It’s something I deeply care about," she tells The New Arab.

She is also working with colleagues across West Asia and North Africa to establish a regional documentary association.

"We don't have one. There's one for Europe, one for America, an international one, but not in our WANA region – West Asia and North Africa."

For Asmahan, the project is part of a wider commitment to documentary cinema and to creating space for stories that might otherwise remain unseen.

"In general, I’m trying to build a life that stays in documentary. Hopefully."

Mariana Hristova is a freelance film critic, cultural journalist, and programmer. She contributes to national and international outlets and has curated programs for Filmoteca de Catalunya, Arxiu Xènctric, and goEast Wiesbaden, among others. Her professional interests include cinema from the European peripheries and archival and amateur films