A murdered cartoonist's pen was mightier than armies. His final frame? Still unfinished.
After the assassination of the Palestinian artist Naji Al-Ali in London in 1987, the film flashes back to the stops that he went through in his life, starting from his displacement with his family to Lebanon, to his work in Kuwait, to his return to Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war.
Acting
Nour El-Sherif's haunted eyes carry 40 years of Palestinian sorrow.
Direction
El-Tayeb's flashback structure mirrors trauma's circular time.
Production
Reconstructed refugee camps with documentary precision.
Director
Atef El-Tayeb
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Nour El-Sherif spent months learning to draw left-handed to match Al-Ali's technique; he kept a sketchbook throughout filming that was later exhibited in Cairo.
Handala, Al-Ali's barefoot refugee child icon, became the symbol of Palestinian resistance—this film premiered five years after the assassination, when the real killers were still officially unknown.
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