MIFF 2025 | ‘Once Upon a Time in Gaza’ review: Palestinian crime caper with a comedic bent and a big heart
The Nasser brothers’ third feature is a tragicomic Rube Goldberg machine of both cultural resistance and farcical coincidence.
Majd Eid and Nader Abd Alhay in “Once Upon a Time in Gaza.” Photo courtesy of the Melbourne International Film Festival.
It’s hard not to think of Palestinian cinema as being under threat of extinction when the Gaza Strip is being bombed into pre-industrial chaos by Israeli settler-colonial forces on a daily basis, and even Oscar-winning directors aren’t safe from unlawful abduction. But the spirit, culture, and people of Palestine are still very much alive if you know where to look. “Once Upon a Time in Gaza” is an incontrovertible thesis statement as such; both a testament to the practice of cinema as resistance and the enduring spirit of the Palestinian people, who we get a rare happy glimpse of here, furiously and vibrantly full of life even under inhumane conditions and looming catastrophe.
The year is 2007, and tensions at the border are rising as Israel designates Gaza a “hostile territory” and threatens to wall the city off from the rest of the world. News of this and other imminent geopolitical developments reach unlikely best friend duo Osama (Majd Eid) and Yahya (Nader Abd Alhay) via the newspapers that wrap the meat-laden pitas they serve at their ramshackle falafel store. But swaggering, larger-than-life Osama has much bigger fish to fry. While timid, bookish Yahya spends all day working the store, Osama cruises around Gaza moonlighting as an opioid peddler, until a botched deal sets off a disastrous chain of events that results in his death at the hands of his old nemesis, corrupt policeman Abou Sami (Ramzi Maqdisi). Traumatised after Osama’s murder, Yahya drifts through Gaza for two aimless years, until a series of strange coincidences gets him casted in the Palestinian Ministry of Culture’s first feature film… and provides him with ample opportunity to avenge Osama at long last.
“Once Upon a Time in Gaza” earned its directors, twin brothers Arab and Tarzan Nasser, the Prix Un Certain Regard for Best Director at Cannes, and the award is well-deserved. At times, it feels like they are directing two movies at once — the film itself, and the film-within-a-film that Yahya is tapped to star in: “The Rebel,” a farcically low-budget project that utilises real guns (and bullets) because the crew have no money to mimic gunshots via CGI. The concept of filmmaking as resistance and its many nuances exists twofold thanks to the inclusion of this meta-film, and the Nassers toy with this duality to impressive tragicomic effect. “The Rebel” is meant to be an act of peaceful resistance but is often mistaken for anything but — in a darkly funny moment, one of its crew members remarks that the Israeli drones hovering over Gaza often mistake their film sets for real-life skirmishes whenever they start shooting. Meanwhile, under the wing of the kindly director who casted him off the street, Yahya blooms and grows into a leading man both onscreen and off, mustering up the courage to engage in an act of far less peaceful resistance wholly personal to him; a well-crafted thematic counterpoint that acknowledges how the deep-seated human instinct to resolve personal struggles often runs counter to the needs of public and political strife.
On a metatextual level, “Once Upon a Time in Gaza” is, itself, another form of cinematic resistance; an astute comment on the inherently paradoxical relationship that Palestine has with American culture, which is both a touchstone for aspiring Palestinian filmmakers to build their cinematic identities on, and a hammer of oppression hell-bent on crushing that resistance. The film is at its least subtle when making reference to America, from the clip of Donald Trump ruminating on Gaza being “the riviera of the east” to the directors of “The Rebel” comparing Yahya to pictures of Rambo after his audition reading. Even the film title pays homage to “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” a nod to how film serves as the cultural fundament of both countries, no matter how opposed they are — although, thankfully, the Nasser brothers handle their nation’s burgeoning cinematic culture in far less grating a fashion than Tarantino did for his own. Fairytale title aside, the Palestinian reality of life during wartime never feels more apparent even when we are laughing at the Nassers’ well-crafted absurdism. Bombs obliterate buildings in between scenes; an actor playing an Israeli soldier refuses to step on the Palestinian flag despite the director’s pleas that “it’s just acting.” And it is just acting for Yahya too… until the film reaches its' boiling point, at which point it very much isn’t just acting any more — a grim reminder that violence is all too easy to look away from until the maelstrom descends upon you.
In a scene near the film’s conclusion, Yahya sees a car just like Osama’s drive past, blaring his deceased friend’s favourite pop song to boot, and flashes back to their first meeting. All the tropes we're familiar with are on full display here — polar opposites form lifelong bonds at a meet-cute; the boisterous strongman takes the weedy, nerdy runt under his wing. Yet the moment is still one of the film’s most heart-rending moments, a perfectly-edited denouement for the friendship that Yahya must now lay to rest. In this vein, and unlike plenty of other films on the festival circuit, “Once Upon a Time in Gaza” finds its greatest strengths when its message is at its most obvious, and conversely, its biggest weaknesses in its subtleties. Throughout the film there never seems to be any real driving force behind its events save for coincidence — which, while a great comedic engine, can only take a film so far, let alone hold up what many might feel is an unjust or undeserved conclusion. For this otherwise brilliantly tragicomic Rube Goldberg machine to fall apart in its final scenes is certainly disappointing. But it’s also hard to complain when this is also the only real disappointment the film ever serves up; a tiny bit of gristle in an otherwise beautifully-wrapped falafel that Osama himself would be proud of.
“It will end,” declares the film’s final title card, in place of the conventional “The End,” or “Fin” — a bold promise to both the people of Palestine, and anyone who, like Yahya, might struggle to shuck off the weight of past shame. It will take courage, and dedicated resistance, and quite possibly a whole lot of luck, too. But every “once upon a time” comes with the tacit promise of a happy ending. So we must believe, and so we must act. It will end.
