ON SCREEN | REVIEW ‘THE LIGHT THAT REMAINS’

By Faizah Cyanide • On Reviews

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.

 

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Faizah Cyanide

Faizah works in clin­ic­al research by pro­fes­sion and has been an avid Hip Hop lov­er since the early 90’s, hav­ing cre­ated her own Hip Hop event, ‘Breakin’ Bound­ar­ies’ in the early 2000’s which was pre­dom­in­antly based around the concept of bboy battles, she has worked with sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al events pro­moters and dan­cers to inspire oth­ers through this artform.

About Faizah Cyanide

Faizah works in clinical research by profession and has been an avid Hip Hop lover since the early 90's, having created her own Hip Hop event, 'Breakin' Boundaries' in the early 2000's which was predominantly based around the concept of bboy battles, she has worked with several international events promoters and dancers to inspire others through this artform.