What’s an Oscar Worth?

posted on: Mar 26, 2025

By: B. Nimri Aziz / Arab America Contributing Writer

It was costly for British actor Vanessa Redgrave, who began speaking out in the 1970s and was pilloried for daring to address an unspeakable subject. She refused to back down, famously calling her adversaries ‘Zionist hooligans.’ Resolute in the face of relentless hostility, she simply retorted, ‘I had to do my bit’— 40 years later, in 2018, at the age of 81, still blacklisted by the entertainment industry, still under attack.

In 1978, at the height of her distinguished career, Redgrave—holding a microphone in one hand and her Oscar in the other (for her role as an anti-Nazi crusader in Julia)—had boldly affirmed her political principles while addressing the doggedly ‘apolitical’ Academy Awards audience.

And what had Redgrave dared to do? Advocate for sovereignty and justice for Palestine. Standing alone before fellow film stars and international viewers 47 years ago was far bolder than it would be today. Did she foresee the high price she would pay? Banishment from the profession and decades of relentless scorn followed that moment of moral probity. The bilious attacks directed at her stemmed from Palestine, a documentary she produced the previous year, in 1977. (Even its screening in 2023 was met by violent threats.) It was about the PLO. Remember the PLO?

Today, the blasphemous, unutterable word is ‘Hamas’. As I expected, the outlawed term never crossed the lips of No Other Land’s happy Oscar winners at the March 2nd awards ceremony. The Israeli director’s statement seemed carefully measured, considering the pitiful, helpless images of Gaza seared into the minds of tens of millions worldwide over the past 17 months. He called for parity between his people and the Palestinians while unfailingly adding an appeal for the release of Israeli hostages. As I recall, the words ‘Gaza’ and ‘genocide’ were entirely absent from his statement, as well as from the brief, shy remarks made by his Palestinian partner.

The cost of this 2025 Oscar was surely paid—and continues to be extracted—in the saddest, most horrifying, and most devastating way: the massive number of martyred Gazans, the uncounted wounded, and the hundreds of thousands left homeless and starving. To this day.

Perhaps the award is a sorry acknowledgment of the Gazans’ suffering and loss. Perhaps a stand-in for the utter helplessness felt by millions worldwide, marching city after city in support of Palestinian rights and an end to the genocide. Perhaps a substitute for failed legal efforts to hold Israel accountable. Perhaps for the countless moral appeals that vanished into a void. Or perhaps it is compensation for earlier Palestinian film nominees who never made the cut—like a lifetime achievement award given to a veteran actor repeatedly passed over.

No Other Land is not the first film to garner Oscar attention. In 2013, Five Broken Cameras was nominated in the same category. Another Israeli production, it chronicled a Palestinian family’s thwarted attempts to film the willful destruction of their home. In 2001, yet another Israeli film, Promises, reached the Academy’s list of nominees. It featured seven boys—four Jews and three Palestinians—living in Jerusalem and the West Bank. At the time, it may have seemed prescient, a ‘promise’ of peaceful coexistence. Long forgotten.

Significantly, like No Other Land, Promises, and Five Broken Cameras, all depict Palestinian life – strained, tormented, or reflective; always fraught, forever uncertain – in the Occupied West Bank. Not in Gaza, where hardships have always been far more severe. (The Occupied West Bank had been conveniently accessible to outsiders, especially for an Israeli participant.)

Filmmaker Cherien Dabis, a rising figure in the industry, had hoped to break that pattern when she undertook the production inside Gaza of All That’s Left of You. Dabis, the film’s Palestinian writer and director, began filming in Gaza in 2022. After the war erupted in October 2023, she was forced to shift production to Jordan and elsewhere. Becoming a multi-national effort. Premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It stands apart as an exclusive all-Palestinian work featuring well-known actors Maria Zreik, Mohammed Bakri, and Ramzi Maqdisi. All That’s Left of You is an epic drama that traces the fortunes of three generations of Palestinians, beginning with the Nakba—the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland.

That momentous calamity is the focus of Farha, another new and powerful Palestinian production. Told through the eyes of a teenage girl, Farha is by Jordan-based director Darin Salaam in collaboration with Watermelon Films. Watermelon Films also produced From Ground Zero, a collection of 22 short films assembled from war footage sent from inside Gaza. (As if our 17 months of live feeds via TikTok and television had not already told the story.)

Up to 30 years ago, most commentaries about Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine were one-dimensional expositions by political scientists and an occasional journalist. Among them, Robert Fisk’s was an exception. Today, such works have been eclipsed—perhaps unsurprisingly—by a new generation of artists. Palestinian creative writers are now at the forefront of interpreting, for our distracted and distant world, the trauma and determination of compatriots in Occupied Gaza and the West Bank. In parallel, Palestinian-made films document their past and present. Currently showing at film festivals are A State of Passion and Where Olive Trees Weep.

A State of Passion, by director Carol Mansour and producer Muna Khalidi, follows a British Palestinian surgeon’s valiant efforts during ongoing Israeli bombardment. It stands alone as the only Gaza-based production. Where Olive Trees Weep records Palestinian journalist and therapist Ashira Darwish’s 2022 journey in the West Bank, other Palestinian-women-directed films are Salt of the Sea by Annemarie Jacir and Bye Bye Tiberias 2023 by Lina Soualem.

We have film festivals in Toronto and Chicago exclusively devoted to the Palestinian experience. Showcases like these serve to draw attention to the sometimes-overlooked contributions of Arab filmmakers–many Palestinian. The 2025 year marks the 29^th year of AFMI, Arab Film and Media Institute in San Francisco, paralleling 25 years of Aflamuna in Beirut. A major venue for Arab cinema talent, AFMI screens Arab films from around the globe. An established tradition in the Arab homelands, filmmaking in the diaspora is now flourishing. Early productions are less easy to find. But anyone who cares about Palestinian history should seek out work from veteran filmmakers Nazareth-born Elia Suleiman and the Lebanon-based team Mai Masri and Jean Chamoun, whose first production was Under the Rubble in 1983. The director of Omar and Rana’s Wedding is Palestinian-Dutch filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad. His Paradise Now was a 2006 Oscar nominee.

Repeated wars and upheavals, inexorable hope, the arrival of new talent, and the unwavering determination to ensure their rights and struggles are not forgotten are affirmed in every one of these productions.

Every personal story and recalled historical moment underpins the haunting images of Gaza, relentlessly piercing our consciousness.

B. Nimri Aziz is a New York based anthropologist and journalist. Her latest book is Justice Stories, a children’s book about Nepali women rebels. Find her work at www.barbaranimri.com. 

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