MIFF 2025: Once Upon a Time in Gaza

Melbourne International Film Festival 2025 is ongoing and I went to watch my sixth session (of 12!)

This post my short review of “Once Upon a Time in Gaza”

For context: I am a photographer/youtuber that wants to up my cinematography and storytelling, that’s why I’m watching 12 sessions at the film festival PLUS reviewing them here on my blog!

This glimpse of how Gaza was in 2007-2010s was really interesting — well not sure if it’s accurate to real life. It was amazing to see the film being sold-out and that is with two separate cinemas in HOYTS Melbourne Central (one of the main cinemas) running the film at the same time.

All images courtesy of miff.com.au

Structure

The opening credits were shown together with Trump’s voice (urgh) in the background, commenting on making the Gaza Strip the Riviera of the Middle East (my goodness). Then, the opening scenes had a dead person being carried through the streets, with the Palestinian flag waved around. We are then introduce to the main character, Osama, with a bit of a “thrown into the story and we need to catchup on what’s going on”, it was quickly revealed that he deals drugs. Then they introduced the second main character, Yahya, in a similar way where things just happens and you as the audience just put things together. That structure was kind of preserved throughout the film in a bite-size chunks.

There were few conflict sequences that came out of nowhere. They didn’t appear in a jump-scare way, but just in a pure unexpected way with zero telegraphing to the audience. It reminded me of the anime “Attack on Titan” when they revealed one key information to the story very casually without any telegraphing that it was going to happen. It makes for a “wait what” double-take sort of feeling. I feel like that abrupt interruption is part of telling the story in Gaza, where attacks and horrible things can happen at any moment.

Narrative

The narrative was full of surprises, not your run of a mill story that can be predicted. Well, there was the classic clash between rebels and the police, kind of in '“Les Miserable”, except in this film the cop is corrupt. The other details of the film were quite unique! The fact that they were making a movie inside of the movie was so funny. The scenes of them acting in the middle of a busy district was awesome, you should look out for that.

The characters development felt like it was the most that they can do in the length of the movie, however, there’s a degree of suspending-belief or assumptions to be make to understand the motive of character’s actions. Like, okay, the cop is corrupted, but why? Is it just the classic “I am drunk with power” or is there more to it? When one character was avenging the other, it seemed a bit out of character but also maybe inline with the rest of the story (and the story of the film inside the film!). But anywho, this is kind of nitpicking on it. Overall, I quite enjoyed the story and liked the surprises.

Cinematography

I didn’t quite remember anything too extraordinary here. There was a talking scene between Osama and Yahya that was cool, it was a classic “talking head of person A over the shoulder of person b” where they had the camera angled in a satisfying way where the bokeh on the other characters face was very pleasing. Another shot that I liked was when one person lied down and they had a shot of their perspective and it was a sideways-portrait-orientation, as in just like how you would see the world when lying down on your side. Pretty nifty.

Other than that, it felt quite integrated to the story — which is a good thing! Nothing seemed out of place, like “hey why is this shot that way” sort of thing. There is a (big) chance that I’m misremembering due to the narrative having lots of surprises that I couldn’t focus on the cinematography.

Who do I recommend this to?

People who like twists and turns but don’t enjoy horror/thrillers with jump scares. If that makes sense at all. I mean more like people that like stories that are not predictable or just linear. And also of course, anyone who supports Palestinians in Gaza (which should just be everyone!)

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MIFF 2025: The Love That Remains