Palestinian shorts: The Miracle of Life + Colors Under The Sky + Very Small Dreams + Hassan
Four short films from Palestine about everyday resilience, fragile hope and lives shaped by occupation and displacement: 'The Miracle of Life', 'Colors Under The Sky', 'Very Small Dreams' and 'Hassan'.
The Miracle of Life
Sabrine Khoury / Netherlands & Palestine / 2025 / 8 min
A Palestinian mother-to-be navigates the upheavals of pregnancy from the Netherlands in a deeply personal and partially animated documentary poem.
Sabrine Khoury is expecting a child. As an expectant mother, she struggles with the emotional and physical challenges of pregnancy. And as a Palestinian in the Netherlands, she struggles with her feelings about the unimaginable horrors unfolding in Gaza at the same time.
‘The Miracle of Life’ is a deeply personal and poetic film that, in diary form – and through both film and animation – introduces us to the artist’s personal universe. Khoury reflects on the pain, uncertainty, and physical changes, as well as her own identity, while challenging society’s norms around motherhood.
Colors Under The Sky
Reema Mahmoud / Palestine, France & Qatar / 2025 / 20 min
Aya, a young artist from Gaza, lost her father and brother and was displaced with her mother to a tent in Rafah. Amid the destruction and war, she insists on composing and recording her new song.
Aya, a 22-year-old artist from Gaza, lost her father and brother and was displaced with her mother to a tent in Rafah. Despite the harshness of war, she is determined to pursue her passion for singing.
The film follows her journey as she searches for a composer and a studio to record her new song amidst the destruction, after setting herself a formidable challenge: to compose, sing, and record a song during the war and after immense loss. Will Aya be able to fulfill her dream?
Very Small Dreams
I'timad Wishah / Palestine, France & Qatar / 2025 / 21 min
In Gaza’s refugee camps, women struggle to maintain their dignity and health amid inhumane conditions, where even the simplest needs become a daily battle for survival.
In the displacement tents of Rafah, Palestinian women try to preserve the well-being of their bodies despite the absence of the most necessities, those essential items no woman can do without, anywhere and at any time. Through living their daily realities, we discover the alternatives and innovations these women employ to protect their bodily dignity, especially during pregnancy, childbirth, and the period that follows, where bringing a child into life becomes a grueling adventure in a setting defined by the absence of life. ‘Very Small Dreams’ takes us on a hidden, silent journey in which women claim the simplest of very small dreams.
Hassan
Muhammad Alshareef / Palestine, France & Qatar / 2025 / 30 min
A 17-year-old Palestinian is trapped by need amid Gaza’s starvation war. His dangerous attempt to fetch a sack of flour ends with a lone fifteen-month journey from north to south Gaza.
When the starvation war in northern Gaza intensified, Hassan, a 17-year-old boy, never expected that his dangerous attempt to bring home a sack of flour would end with four days of detention, followed by fifteen months of forced displacement from the north to the south of Gaza. During this time, he lived alone in exile, moving from one overcrowded shelter to another, searching for food and a place to sleep, while repeatedly trying to reunite with his family scattered between loss and waiting.
He lost his younger brother before displacement, and his father during the expulsion. The haunting desire to return home never left him, driven by the hope of being close again to what remained of his family — his mother and sister.




