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“We Need to Keep Working, Otherwise Our Voices Will Be Buried and Unheard.”: Areeb Zuaiter on Her Gaza-Set DOC NYC World Premiere Yalla Parkour
Yalla Parkour Threads concerning family, identity and resistance are carefully interwoven in Yalla Parkour, Palestinian filmmaker Areeb Zuaiter’s portrait of Gaza’s scrappy yet talented troupe of parkour athletes. After getting in touch with Ahmed Matar—a young man who dreams of securing a rare visa so that he may attend international parkour tournaments—Zuaiter realizes that by documenting his story, she can reconnect with a facet of her own heritage that she had once felt completely closed off to.
While her family originally hails from the city of Nablus in the West Bank, conversing with Ahmed brings out the filmmaker’s own misconceptions about life in Gaza. Via voiceover diary entries to her late mother, Zuaiter reflects on her family’s connection to Palestine, the militarized violence that has indelibly shaped the lives of all its citizens and how to strengthen the next generation’s bond to a homeland that is actively being destroyed. Considering that Zuaiter and her team tackled the edit during the aftermath of October 7th and Israel’s ongoing genocidal campaign, these questions continue to carry an enormous weight.
Zuaiter and I spoke via Zoom a few days before Yalla Parkour’s world premiere at this year’s DOC NYC. Below, we discuss how the filmmaker’s relationship with her mother became a narrative throughline, why she wasn’t able to travel to Gaza and the martyred crew members whose memory the film is dedicated to.
Filmmaker: Your film contains over a decade of footage from Ahmed’s parkour exploits in Gaza. What was the process of sifting through, and then editing, these videos into the doc?
Zuaiter: Thank you for spotting this. It was a really daunting process, and it wasn’t easy at all. We had to go through a well of footage. I have to give credit to the editor as well, Phil Jandaly, who was so patient to look at every clip with me. At some points, it felt like a rabbit hole. We had the themes of the film clear, but at some points we would get distracted by something so fascinating and we would be thinking, “Should we let it in, should we not let it in?” But then we had to get back to the main track we sketched for the film. At some point, I doubted if I was even able to tell the story with all of these elements that are included in it.
Filmmaker: How many hours of footage were you given?
Zuaiter: I would say about 20 hours.
Filmmaker: Similarly, the film contains footage shot on the ground as well as plenty of videos sourced from Ahmed and his friends. A device that I really enjoy is you and Ahmed conversing over these videos and having him describe what’s happening. Would you look through these videos and then decide which one to have Ahmed react to, or was it more organic?
Zuaiter: It was a long process, to be honest. At the beginning, it wasn’t that organic. It was more about me discovering that the perception of Gaza that I had was really different from what Ahmed was showing me. There was this disconnect between what I hold in my memory and the reality of this place. At the beginning, he would show me videos that he would send to [parkour] competitions to flex his skills. But this is not what I was after, I was after knowing Gaza. So my intention was a bit different than his intention at first. He wanted to break free from this place, and I wanted to get in. I wanted to see what Gaza is about: What’s life like there? What’s beyond what we see? I know what we see in the news. It’s not the people, it’s not the community. We’re all Palestinians as a community, So [I thought that] what I lived in Nablus has to be identical to life in Gaza. The moment we aligned is the moment he got out and started to feel the disconnect between the previous life he had in Gaza. And that’s when that “organic” discussion started happening. What you see in the beginning of the film was more of him showing me what parkour is, but I wouldn’t say that was what I was longing for or what I was after.
Filmmaker: Was it difficult to interweave the narratives about parkour athletes in Gaza as well as your mother’s legacy and your own Palestinian perspective? It all congeals so wonderfully through your voiceover, but I’m curious to know more about how you balanced it all.
Zuaiter: I have to be honest, treating the film as a letter to my mom came about later in the editing process. Like you said, there was a humongous amount of footage between the GoPro footage they were sending me, the filming that I acquired through a cinematographer [in Gaza] and filming myself in my home. I wanted to find a way to weave it all through, and I kept searching for how I could do this. Everything comes from that sense of belonging, and I find my mother’s smile to be a metaphor for that, so I thought something should be dedicated to her.
Filmmaker: So you began this process of speaking with Ahmed, and even thought about traveling to Gaza, before the element of your mother emerged during the edit?
Zuaiter: Yes, absolutely. Even later on, after October 7th, I felt [the film] had to be relevant to what’s happening today. It will probably be offensive to the people of Gaza if it was alienated from what’s going on. And I have to just highlight one thing you said: I never made it to Gaza. I was so blessed to be working with a really dedicated team who were helping me acquire the footage, even the professionally-filmed footage. I would spend hours with them on the phone, just sending references of how I wanted the film to look. Sometimes, they would send something and I would ask them to repeat it in a specific style that I was looking for. Unfortunately, I couldn’t risk going. Not because of the “danger,” it was more related to my ID. I was concerned I would lose my access to Nablus if I made it to Gaza. It’s not easy to describe here, but it’s a concern that would not let me go to Gaza.
Filmmaker: Yeah, I understand in the film, there was a conversation that you had with Ahmed where you guys were talking about the difficulty of passing from one place to another. Actually, I wanted to bring up the Gaza crew. Ahmed visited and returned to Sweden just before Israel began its full-blown campaign of genocide, and the film ends with several dedications to crew members who have died as a result. How did their memory, and the past 13 months of bloodshed, shape your post-production process?
Zuaiter: It was devastating. I mean, the bulk of the work has been done in the past year. I would go to Sweden back and forth to get the editing done, and keep receiving this news. The first news I received was that the cinematographer lost his home because he was living on the northern side of Gaza before he fled. Then I hear that the entire neighborhood next to one of the characters in the film was bombed, and he lost his entire family: his uncle, his aunt, her husband and their children were killed. The protagonist’s house was bombed. Actually, one of the cinematographers was killed even before [October 7th]. He was killed in the March of Return, a peaceful march in 2018. Another cinematographer was killed in December. And then one of the sound recorders. Recently, one of the [parkour] team members, Saeed Tattari, was trying to help others from under the rubble. Another shelling happened and killed him along with his brother. When this all started happening, I would be paralyzed in front of the TV crying. But then I realized that we just can’t stop. We need to keep working, otherwise our voices will be buried and unheard. So it was one of the most effective times to work on the film, but at the same time, it was also one of the darkest.
Filmmaker: Speaking of that preservation of memory, I love that your children gradually become involved in the film; that final shot with them drawing the Mediterranean Sea. What conversations have you had with them about their heritage while making this project?
Zuaiter: You hear all these stories of people being killed because of their views. I want them to be well-read. I keep telling them that you can’t talk about a subject before reading about it and creating your own opinion. Otherwise, nobody will listen to you.
We always go to the Middle East every year, specifically Jordan, where there is a big Palestinian community. They’re so attached to it. Once they hear news here and there, it becomes so personal to them. But I really try to tame that—if that’s really an expression we can use—by telling them that they need to read more before they can discuss this in a more effective manner. It’s not easy to talk about this subject to kids right now. Sometimes I’m concerned about what they’re exposed to in schools.
Filmmaker: I’m also curious how the film, or your general process of making it, may have encouraged them to reflect back on their grandmother and her presence in their lives?
Zuaiter: It’s there all the time. For example, my daughter carries the name of my mom. My mom used to be an artist, and my daughter is the same. I’ll always share experiences I had back home in Nablus with my mother and my grandmother. It’s an ongoing discussion with little examples and details that help paint the picture in their minds. My son is very vocal about his identity and where he stands. Like I said, when we go to Jordan, he sees what the culture is, how his grandfather talks and deals with things. It’s more about me trying to offer them living examples and talk about details I’ve lived with back home.
Filmmaker: I read that there’s no distributor attached to the film yet, a prospect which seems to be an uphill battle for Palestinian documentaries at the moment. Is there any update on that front?
Zuaiter: There are no updates. We haven’t committed to a distributor yet, but we have been approached by distributors. My producer sometimes says that it’s tough to commit to a Palestinian film, but I really don’t agree. There are distributors who are approaching, but we’re trying to be careful on the choice we make, if that makes sense.
Filmmaker: What made DOC NYC the perfect place to unveil your film and share it with an audience for the first time?
Zuaiter: We didn’t think of it, to be honest, as the perfect place. Me and the producer, Basel Mawlawi, discussed that we need this film to go out as soon as possible. The first decent festival that picks it up gets the world premiere. We didn’t want to go after a specific name. But then once we got into DOC NYC, it was really the perfect place for the film to premiere worldwide. I’ve been very happy with how it’s been treated at the festival. I also have been living here for a while and I know people in New York that I’ve been inviting to come and watch the film. I feel home, if that makes sense.
Filmmaker: Is it true that Ahmed is going to also be in attendance?
Zuaiter: Yes. He’s coming with his partner. He’s so excited. I know Basel will be leaving right after the first screening, but Ahmed will be there with me for both.
Filmmaker: Is there anything that you’re hoping that audiences bring into the film or specifically take away from it?
Zuaiter: I would love that they bring their hearts with them. I also wanted to give a portrait of Gaza that had been there forever. At some point, people started forgetting how devastating everything was until these recent events. So I want them to take that away with them, also: that this is a place that was not easy to live in to begin with, and now it’s been left the way that it has. I wanted to show how things got worse with time. But I don’t want people to leave without feeling the sense of community in Gaza. It’s something that attracted me to Gaza in the first place, the sense of community that I once felt in Nablus.
