With Hasan in Gaza

With Hasan in Gaza is a 2025 documentary film directed by Kamal Aljafari. The film had its world premiere in the main competition of the 78th Locarno Film Festival on 7 August 2025, where it was nominated for the Golden Leopard.

Production

In November 2001, amid the Second Intifada, director Kamal Aljafari began documenting his search for a man he had been imprisoned with in Gaza in 1989; accompanying him in his search was a man named Hasan Elboubou. Aljafari later rediscovered the footage, which was stored on three MiniDV tapes and would become With Hasan in Gaza. Aljafari later called the film "an homage to Gaza and its people, to all that was erased and that came back to me in this urgent moment of Palestinian existence, or non-existence. It is a film about the catastrophe, and the poetry that resists."
In June 2025, the film received a grant from the Doha Film Institute.

Release

A trailer for the film was released on 31 July 2025. The film had its world premiere at the 78th Locarno Film Festival on 7 August 2025. It was later screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and the BFI London Film Festival. It will also open in November 2025.

Reception

Amber Wilkinson of Screen Daily called the film "a raw but poignant snapshot of Gaza during the Second Intifada".
Writing for Cineuropa, Davide Abbatescianni argued that the film "serves less as an artistic experiment and more as a testament left by a witness," which "invites us to consider how cinema can preserve – and perhaps restore – spaces that have been physically destroyed but must remain alive in memory."