When “All That’s Left of You” begins, we’re immediately off to the races. A percussive, driving score follows two teen boys — one named Noor (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) — racing through the streets of the West Bank in 1988 during the First Intifada, or uprising. The moment is filled with glee, the boys leaping over rooftops and chasing each other with abandon until they happen upon a protest against the Israeli occupation.
Noor’s friend wants to go home, but Noor has no love for the Israeli forces. He needles his friend (“Are you scared?”), and joins up with the other marchers. Moments later, shots ring out. Noor tries to duck into a car parked on the side of the road just as an IDF bullet shatters the glass windshield. Director Cherien Dabis leaves you hanging on this harrowing moment, the camera peering out through the broken glass. We suddenly switch to Noor’s mother, Hanan (played by Dabis), staring down the barrel of the camera. To understand her son, she says, you have to first understand his grandfather.
“All That’s Left of You” is a sweeping epic spanning roughly 80 years of one Palestinian family’s existence, starting with the mass expulsion of Palestinians from what is now Israel in 1948. The film seamlessly cuts back and forth between Noor, his father Salim, and his grandfather Sharif at different points in their lives. There’s a familial aspect to the casting here as well — Adam Bakri plays Sharif as a young man while his father, the late Mohammad Bakri, plays him as an older man. Adam’s brother Saleh Bakri plays Sharif.
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