ON SCREEN | REVIEW ‘THE LIGHT THAT REMAINS’

The Light That Remains explores the vast, unmet need for trauma sup­port among Palestini­ans, espe­cially young chil­dren who are endur­ing a gen­o­cide in real time. For the first time in his­tory, the world is wit­ness­ing this live on their phones through social media. Many Palestini­an chil­dren are now show­ing signs of severe trauma: pho­bi­as, insom­nia, and in some cases, com­plete loss of speech. Their par­ents who are unable to pro­tect them, carry a pro­found sense of help­less­ness and guilt. Yet there is a recog­ni­tion that exist­ing is resisting.

The film centres on Mosab Ali, a Palestini­an whose fam­ily is evac­u­ated from Gaza for med­ic­al treat­ment but he him­self is unable to leave. Draw­ing on his back­ground as a soft­ware engin­eer, Mosab cre­ates an innov­at­ive vir­tu­al-real­ity pro­gramme designed to help sur­viv­ors, espe­cially chil­dren, cope with the psy­cho­lo­gic­al impact of genocide.

As the gen­o­cide con­tin­ues in real time, the film fol­lows Mosab as he builds TechMed Gaza under siege, while also help­ing every­one around him with their tents, and find­ing food and water. It’s through ser­vice to oth­ers that he finds pur­pose, and a way to safe­guard his own men­tal wellbeing.

Halfway through the film, we learn that Mosab was killed in an Israeli strike. His team con­tin­ues TechMed Gaza in his hon­our, car­ry­ing for­ward his vis­ion. It’s a cold shock to the sys­tem to hear anoth­er story of a Palestini­an who helped his com­munity in mul­tiple ways only for him to be killed. You sense his loss is wider then to only his own fam­ily, it is a loss to humanity.

The screen­ing was fol­lowed by a Q&A with dir­ect­or Maria Mar­rone and pan­el­lists Hala Sab­bah (The Sameer Pro­ject) and Mustafa Jayy­ousi (TechMed Gaza).

One of the points raised which stood out to me was that many NGOs do not pri­or­it­ise Palestini­an well­being, they do not really care as Palestini­ans merely become num­bers, quotas, deliv­er­ables. But com­pan­ies like TechMed, cre­ated by Palestini­ans, exist because they genu­inely care for their com­munit­ies that they are a part of, they under­stand the trauma because they live it too. For example some chil­dren who have received ther­apy have been too weak to speak as they faced the fam­ine, oth­ers have been wounded los­ing limbs and unable to access prosthetics.

Those Palestini­ans work­ing in sup­port­ing oth­ers and in small num­bers as they are tar­geted and deplet­ing. Even ther­ap­ists are car­ry­ing fresh trauma while try­ing to sup­port oth­ers. One ther­ap­ist gave 185 ses­sions in a single month.

In Gaza, where the gen­o­cide is ongo­ing, no one is “healed”; people are being col­lect­ively retrau­mat­ised repeatedly. And unlike West­ern ther­apy mod­els centred on talk-based inter­ven­tion, ther­apy in Gaza integ­rates spir­itu­al­ity and Islam as core pil­lars of healing.

Palestini­ans hold on to moments of joy, like watch­ing a sun­set, to con­tin­ue liv­ing. This comes from the quote, “ith hard­ship comes ease” Qur’an 94:5–6, often explained to mean that the ease exists with­in the hard­ship itself, not after it. To live as a Palestini­an is an act of res­ist­ance. Ser­vice to oth­ers becomes a form of heal­ing in itself.

At the end of the talk when asked for a call to action, the pan­el was clear: this is not a human­it­ari­an crisis. It is a man-made gen­o­cide per­pet­rated by colo­ni­al powers. Char­ity alone is not solid­ar­ity. True solid­ar­ity means sup­port­ing the lib­er­a­tion of Palestine and with it, the lib­er­a­tion of Sudan, Congo, and all peoples suf­fer­ing under the same sys­tems of exploit­a­tion and violence.