All That's Left of You (2025)
Cinema has long wrestled with the Palestinian experience, but rarely with the scope and emotional weight that All That's Left of You attempts. The film opens in the Occupied West Bank of the 1980s, where a single act of protest by a teenage boy sets in motion a reckoning that stretches back across seven decades of displacement, loss, and stubborn survival. That temporal sweep is the film's beating heart: a family saga rooted in the Nakba of 1948, the forced expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that reshaped the region permanently, and which remains one of the most contested and underrepresented events in world cinema. For audiences curious about how film can bear witness to historical trauma, this sits in distinguished company alongside works like Theeb, which found its own quiet, personal way into the Arab experience of upheaval, and Talking About Trees, a documentary that showed how political suppression bleeds into cultural memory.
The film arrives through a genuinely international production effort, assembled across Germany, Cyprus, the United States, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Greece, and several other territories, with Pallas Film and Twenty Twenty Vision among the principal production houses involved. That kind of multinational financing is often a marker of a project too ambitious or too politically sensitive for any single national industry to carry alone, and here it reflects both the global diaspora of Palestinian storytellers and the sheer ambition of the undertaking. At the helm is Cherien Dabis, an American-Palestinian filmmaker whose previous features, Amreeka (2009) and May in the Summer (2013), established her as a precise and emotionally perceptive director of family-centred stories shaped by cultural dislocation. This is her most expansive work by a considerable distance, running to a substantial 146 minutes, and it marks a clear step up in scale without losing the intimacy that characterised her earlier films. The production is also notable for the involvement of Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem as producers, lending the project an unusual degree of international profile for a film rooted so specifically in Palestinian experience.
The cast is anchored by Saleh Bakri, one of the most respected Palestinian actors working today, known to international audiences from films like The Band's Visit and Omar, who plays Salim. Beside him, Dabis takes the role of Hanan herself, the mother whose recollections provide the narrative's spine, a choice that adds an unmistakable personal investment to the performance. The presence of Mohammad Bakri, one of Palestinian cinema's elder statesmen, alongside his sons Saleh and Adam, gives the family at the centre of the story a grounded, almost documentary quality. These are not simply actors playing at grief and resilience. There is a generational and cultural weight behind the casting that a film of this subject matter earns rather than borrows. For those who have followed the quieter currents of Arab and African cinema on this blog, including the review of Lingui, the Sacred Bonds, a film equally concerned with women carrying unbearable burdens with fierce composure, the emotional register here will feel recognisable, if considerably more expansive in its historical reach.
Where do you even begin with a film like All That’s Left of You? Directed by the brilliant Cherien Dabis (who also steps in front of the camera to play Hanan) and backed by producers Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem, this is pretty much a flawless piece of cinema. Roger Ebert always said movies are a machine that generates empathy, and this film does exactly that, but it hits you right in the chest. It takes us back to Palestine before 1948 and gives us a proper, unflinching glimpse of the Nakba, but that's all it is, it's a glimpse and cannot possibly capture the entirety of the horros therein but that's enough to be moved. It’s not just a history lesson; it’s a heart-wrenching look at the tragedy that has befallen the Palestinian people through the occupation.
The acting is just sublime across the board. Saleh Bakri, playing Salim, delivers a performance that is so grounded and deeply moving it practically breaks you, while Dabis herself is amazing as Hanan, bringing a quiet, fierce dignity to the screen. What strikes me most is how real it all feels. It doesn’t feel like a polished studio production trying to tell a distant story; it feels lived-in, raw, and deeply proud. The soundtrack is incredible, too, swelling at the right moments to underscore the tragedy and the resilience without ever feeling manipulative. It’s got dignity in spades.
This is the kind of film that stays with you long after the credits roll. It teaches you so much, not through heavy-handed exposition, but through the sheer, undeniable humanity of its characters. I want to say a massive thank you to Letterboxd for hosting and championing this film, because it’s a vital piece of art that simply needs to be seen. It’s a masterpiece of empathy, tragedy, and pride. Truly one of the best films I've ever seen.
Free Palestine.
All That's Left of You is the sort of film that reframes what you expect cinema to be capable of on any given evening. It belongs to a tradition of political, personal drama that treats history not as backdrop but as the very substance of a family's identity, and it does so with a rare combination of formal control and raw feeling. Whether you come to it as someone already engaged with Palestinian history or as a viewer encountering it largely for the first time, the film asks the same thing of you: attention, patience, and a willingness to sit with discomfort. Those are not small requests. But then, the best films rarely make small requests. Some stories simply refuse to let you look away, and this is one of them.
Rating: ★★★★★ | Year: 2025 | Watched: 2026-06-08
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for All That's Left of You (2025) on YouTube
Where to watch
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