Delicately tackling the themes of exile and the uneasy privilege of survival, Palestinian filmmaker Sawsan Qaoud' s documentary Gaza Grad was just presented at the Open Horizons section of the 28th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival .
The film offers a quiet counterpoint to the avalanche of images emerging from Gaza – rather than focusing on the immediacy of bombardment, the director turns her camera toward those who have escaped it, and the complicated emotional terrain that follows survival.
An experienced documentary filmmaker from Nablus, Sawsan has spent decades documenting Palestinian social realities through intimate human stories.
Educated partly in Russia, where she completed a master's degree in television production, she has a career that spans multiple cultural contexts.
She later continued her studies in the UK at Cardiff University and returned to Palestine to work as a television producer and correspondent before becoming a lecturer at Al-Quds University.
In 2013, she founded the Ramallah-based production company Mashahid for Art and Film Production , through which she has produced documentaries exploring Palestinian identity, memory and social life.
Her long personal and professional relationship with Russia, where she spent several formative years as a student and journalist, unexpectedly shaped the direction of Gaza Grad .
The film follows a Palestinian family – Ghassan, his Russian wife Anna, and their two daughters Lisa and Dunia – as they flee Israeli bombardment in Gaza and rebuild their lives in Russia.
The family settles in Volgograd (the former Stalingrad) in a modest apartment belonging to Anna's late grandmother.
What they gain in safety, however, is overshadowed by what they leave behind: their home, their community, and a life constructed over decades. A story beyond the frontlines Sawsan began working on the film in October 2023, shortly after Israel's genocide escalated. Like many Palestinian filmmakers, she felt compelled to respond, but the direction of her response wasn't immediately clear.
"I didn't know at the beginning if I wanted to make a film," she explains. "I just wanted to document the story."
From her home in the West Bank, she began recording the experiences of a family she knew personally. Only later did she realise that their story captured something rarely addressed in portrayals of Gaza: what happens to those who manage to leave.
For Sawsan, exile carries its own emotional weight: "As Palestinians, leaving home and leaving your history is not easy," she says.
"We have the memory of the Nakba in our history. So when people leave Gaza, they don't only escape the war — they lose the ecosystem of their life."
The film, therefore, focuses less on destruction than on the psychological aftermath of displacement by examining a feeling of guilt that surfaced repeatedly in conversations with the family.
"Many Palestinians who left Gaza feel guilty that they survived while others stayed," she tells The New Arab. " It is truly painful."
By concentrating on intimate moments – conversations at the kitchen table, quiet reflections between siblings, fragments of daily life – the film reframes Palestinians not as statistics but as individuals navigating an emotional terrain that rarely makes headlines.
"I wanted to focus on Palestinians as human beings, not numbers," confirms Sawsan. Filming across borders Capturing the family's journey required an unusual production process. Sawsan initially relied on a small crew inside Gaza to film the family during the earliest stages of the war.
"I couldn't go to Gaza," she says. "But I managed to find a crew that was close to them geographically at that time."
When the family eventually left the territory, the filmmaker began travelling to meet them along the route. Because Sawsan studied in Russia and speaks the language, she had a personal connection that helped build trust with her subjects. As soon as she learned they were heading to Volgograd, she travelled there herself.
"I was waiting for that moment," she says.
Over the course of two years, she followed the family between Russia and Egypt, where the daughters eventually settled, filming in bursts whenever circumstances allowed.
The closeness between the filmmaker and subjects is evident on screen. The camera often feels invisible as the family argues, reminisces, or makes decisions about their future.
"They didn't feel the camera," Sawsan says. "That was very important as it allowed everything to feel natural." A home that cannot be recreated When Ghassan and Anna arrive in Volgograd, they move into her grandmother's small one-bedroom apartment. The space is far smaller than the house they left in Gaza, and the father frequently compares the two.
For Sawsan, the contrast underscores a central reality of exile: "I think Palestinians who leave can never recreate their home," she says.
Still, the apartment offers something the family desperately needs: stability. The property had remained empty for years, visited only occasionally by Anna and her siblings.
"It was almost strange that it was still there," Sawsan says. "It actually saved them."
The family's adaptation unfolds unevenly. Ghassan struggles with the loss of the life he built over decades in Gaza, while Anna quietly carries her own heartbreak, despite returning to the country where she grew up.
"She had a happy life in Gaza," Sawsan elaborates. "A good job, a husband she loved, a community. Even during previous wars, she never imagined she would leave."
The daughters respond differently. Lisa and Dunia grapple with language barriers and cultural dislocation.
Eventually, the sisters separate – at first, they move together to Cairo to be closer to Gaza and the Arab lifestyle – a city and country many Gazans view as culturally familiar – while Dunia later moves to England. Volgograd as a symbol of hope for Gaza Volgograd itself becomes a subtle character in the film. Once known as Stalingrad, the city was nearly destroyed during one of the most brutal battles of the Second World War.
For Sawsan, that history offered an unexpected metaphor: "This city was fully destroyed and then fully rebuilt, something that gives a feeling of resistance, survival and subtle hope that there should be a future for Gaza as well," she explains.
The parallel resonates with the family, particularly Anna, whose relatives endured wartime devastation there decades earlier.
At the same time, the film quietly acknowledges the geopolitical complexity of the setting. Russia remains engaged in its own war, though in daily life, that conflict is rarely discussed openly: "In Russia, people don't talk about war," Sawsan says. "You don't feel it the same way."
In one scene, Anna asks her husband whether they would leave again if conflict reached them there. The question hangs in the air, unresolved.
The film's melancholic atmosphere is reinforced by its music. Rather than using traditional Middle Eastern sounds, Sawsan and her composer opted for classical pieces.
"I felt classical music was closer to Russian culture," she explains. "But it also carries nostalgia and memory." The result subtly bridges the emotional distance between Gaza and Russia, mirroring the family's own hybrid identity. A universal story of exile Although the documentary focuses on a single family, audiences have responded to its broader resonance. The film premiered earlier this year at the Oran International Arab Film Festival in Algeria , where many Palestinian refugees attended screenings.
"Spectators told me, ‘I feel like you are talking about me,'" Sawsan says. Later screenings, including at the Karama Human Rights Film Festival in Jordan, revealed another unexpected reaction.
Younger viewers became fixated on the fate of the family's dog, Gucci, left behind in Gaza. "We still don't know what happened to the dog," Sawsan says.
The question may seem small, but it captures one of the film's quiet insights: the details of everyday life, such as pets, musical instruments, and photographs, are inseparable from identity.
"When people flee, they think first about survival," Sawsan reflects. "But later they realise they lost the objects that were part of who they were." Survival in limbo Two years after filming began, the family's story remains unfinished. Ghassan and Anna still live in Russia, waiting for news from Gaza and hoping to return one day.
Lisa remains in Egypt, unsure of her next step. Dunia has moved to England after receiving a scholarship. Like many displaced families, they are scattered across continents.
For Sawsan, that fragmentation reflects a broader Palestinian experience that stretches back generations: "This is not the first exile for Palestinians," she says. "It has been happening since 1948."
Yet the film resists despair in its quiet moments: a guitar played in a small apartment, a photograph taken to preserve a fleeting memory. It finds signs of resilience.
"Without hope," Sawsan says simply, "we cannot survive." Mariana Hristova is a freelance film critic, cultural journalist, and programmer. She contributes to national and international outlets and has curated programs for Filmoteca de Catalunya, Arxiu Xènctric, and goEast Wiesbaden, among others. Her professional interests include cinema from the European peripheries and archival and amateur films