At the 98th Academy Awards held at the Dolby Theatre in almighty Hollywood, Javier Bardem was virtually the only presenter bold enough to express his political views at an event that appeared to be, once again, mainly about cracking jokes (a forgettable Conan O’Brien) and skirting around the outskirts.
As he presented the award for Best International Feature Film, Bardem’s own interest lay in multi award-winning intergenerational Jordan exile drama All That’s Left of You, directed by Palestinian American filmmaker and actress Cherien Dabis (Amreeka, 2009) who also stars as the female lead (Hanan Hammad), and coproduced by Bardem and Mark Ruffalo.
Moving and timely as it is, the film – which takes us from 1948, to 1978, to 1988, and to 2022 [1] – premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2025 [2], took home the Audience Award for Best International Feature at the 2025 Sydney Film Festival, and won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes.[3]
It was one of three films about Palestinian history submitted for this year’s academy awards alongside Palestine 36 (likewise starring Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri, who claims that “our work is resistance”[4]), and captivating The Voice of Hind Rajab – which made it big internationally ‘thanks to’ its American backing.[5]
The 2026 Oscars award for Best International Feature, where aforementioned The Voice of Hind Rajab was one of five contenders [6], went to comparatively lightweight Norwegian drama/tragicomedy Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, 2025).[7]
Nominated for 9 awards, it might have been the cinematically and cinematographically more explorative movie, combining “emotional weight with stylistic flair.”[8] Still, one wonders if in these times of quick entertainment and instant gratification, dire global news – where we go from one catastrophe to another – is too much to handle. Emotional numbness and news fatigue lead to disengagement and uncritical doomscrolling.
Do stories about the plights of Palestinians fail to sufficiently engage saturated audiences? Even more taxing if viewers are forced to occasionally divert their attention away from English to Arabic, which is what is required if greater authenticity is to be achieved. Whatever the case, Hollywood was not fully ready to embrace international politics across important categories.
Israel and Palestine continue to make headlines off-screen; beyond the festive limits of the Dolby Theatre, and Javier Bardem’s concise message at the 2026 Oscars took clear sides: “No to War, and Free Palestine”. A statement that speaks volumes, the versatile Spanish actor might as well have been addressing all forcefully occupied territories throughout the history of mankind, including his native Spain that likewise has colonising blood on its hands when it comes to Latin America.
Constructive dialogue, diplomacy and common sense are commonly not common at all – not now, not ever. When it comes to Palestine, the country has been under siege for more than 7 decades, going back to its forced occupation in 1948, the establishment of the State of Israel the same year,[9] the bloody Nakba [10] (or “The Palestinian Catastrophe”[11], when more than 700,000 people were displaced), and the Arab-Israeli War.
Fast-forward to 2026 and (some kind of) history repeats itself. As the US keeps meddling in world affairs, sides with Israel, and wages war on the Middle East [12], the insatiable desire by the West to claim territories on Earth is not enough. Space has got to be populated as well.
Human greed knows no bounds. The sky is, literally, the limit as space travel (pre-settling?) grabs the interest of an elite focussed on new ventures and adventures; the poor left to their own devices. The recent 10-day lunar flyby by Artemis II prior to perfect splashdown where the crew of Fantastic 4s made it to the Dark side of the Moon [13] and back is proof of what we can do when we use technology to our neo-colonising favour 21st century style.
More concerted efforts at securing Peace on Earth are relegated to the back seat: “Under Artemis, NASA will send astronauts on increasingly difficult missions to explore more of the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build on our foundation for the first crewed mission to Mars.”[14] The Washington Post soberly notes that “the private economy is winning the space race. Not NASA”.[15]
And yet, rising above it all, her logic refreshing at a time when collectivist thinking is preferable to individualist greed, Christina Koch’s message to her fellow earthlings taps into a higher level of consciousness:
“A crew is a group that is in it all the time, no matter what, that is stroking together every minute with the same purpose, that is willing to sacrifice silently for each other, that gives grace, that holds accountable … A crew has the same cares and the same needs, and a crew is inescapably, beautifully, dutifully linked …When we saw tiny Earth, people asked our crew what impressions we had. And honestly, what struck me wasn’t necessarily just Earth, it was all the blackness around it.”[16]
A People reporter notes that ”[t]he complete darkness surrounding our planet reminded Koch that we are all living on a lifeboat hanging disturbingly in the universe”[17]. Oh, the darkness of it all. Darkness and existentialist ruminations. A world order as disorderedly as ever.[18]
In this context, “sweeping intimate epic” All That’s Left of You, which depicts eight decades of Palestinian life and is filmed across several countries [19] and where Dabis takes as a point of departure her refugee father, is more pertinent than ever and looks at the bigger picture.
Stark and raw in its global message yet at the same time subtle and sophisticated, informed and aware, the film is attentive to the many injustices inflicted on Palestinians throughout their traumatic history of forced resettlement – with repercussions right up until today.[20]
It tells that story in a direct manner; its focus on individual faces that represent an entire population. It speaks of loss, of stirred-up antagonism and decisions that have irreparable consequences. It is Israelis against Palestinians but they are all involved in a larger powerplay.
With aspects from Alcarràs (orange groves here replace Carla Simón’s peach trees ‘from 2022’) and socially concerned All About My Mother, which is likewise about body transplants/donation, Bardem – who shares a close bond with Spanish maestro Pedro Almodóvar and now acts as executive producer – might have had something to say in the narrative twist of All That’s Left of You.
With a running time of 2:15 hrs, in the film’s final stages Dabis has a young Palestinian heart transplanted into the body of the enemy, a sickly Israeli exempt from military duty. The – incredulous, heartbroken and enraged – mother of the diseased, in need of an answer (Dabis), goes in search of her son’s heart (like Manuela had done 27 years earlier in Almodóvar’s ‘obra maestra’). The films are radically different, but their larger message is the same: that of compassion across peoples and divides.
All That’s Left of You is political and appears to be pro-Palestinian but in getting to the core without melodramatic sentimentality, Dabis leaves the wider reflections to the viewer, and her final “profoundly humanistic turn” (Sergio Burstein, Los Angeles Times) makes all the difference.
The film moves us in its sincerity and capacity to depict social injustices that go all the way back to the (post British mandate) United Nations partition of Palestine and the loss of the Homeland. Come the end, it no longer takes sides to the same extent as before but opens for wider conversation (“honestly, I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore”).
In that accomplishment and its engagement with memory studies through a focus on “displacement, diaspora, love, loss, and quiet acts of resistance”[21] lies the poetic grandeur of All That’s Left of You.
I am the sea,
In my depths all treasures dwell
(All That’s Left of You)
All That’s Left of You – an intergenerational drama that emphasises the Power of Humanity
Words: Dr Jytte Holmqvist
Images: All That’s Left of You (film stills)
Further reading:
www.hrw.org/world-report/2026/country-chapters/israel-and-palestine
www.cfr.org/backgrounders/what-us-policy-israeli-palestinian-conflict
Footnotes:
[1] www.thefilmverdict.com/all-thats-left-of-you/
[2] www.webtv.un.org/en/asset/k10/k10i9v2o2j
[3] ”All That’s Left of You was selected as Jordan’s official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards. Despite difficulty securing a U.S distributor, truth does prevail. … With respect to the overall storyline inspiration, Dabis ascertains: ‘We Palestinians are relegated to aimless, faceless headlines and numbers. And our personal stories are not told how we are impacted, and our lives are shaped and changed by all of this violence that’s just been imposed on us decade after decade. No one knows that. No one really understands the impact or the trauma on the Palestinian people, like the kind of and the different kinds of violence… not just in physical violence, the psychological violence.’” www.fractyll.com See also: www.forward.com
[4] www.youtube.com Bakri’s statement reflects the key reminder in the film: “Your humanity is also resistance” – www.democracynow.org
[5] In his director’s statement, Kaouther Ben Hania writes: “…during a layover at LAX, everything shifted. I heard an audio recording of Hind Rajab begging for help. By then, her voice had already spread across the Internet. I immediately felt a mix of helplessness, and an overwhelming sadness. A physical reaction, like the ground shifted under me. I couldn’t carry on as planned. I contacted the Red Crescent and asked them to let me hear the full audio. After listening to it, I knew, without a doubt, that I had to drop everything else. I had to make this film.” www.labiennale.org
[6] The others were The Secret Agent, It Was Just an Accident, Sentimental Value, and Sirāt.
[7] www.imdb.com and www.oscars.org
[8] “Accepting the award, Trier said he felt compelled to act as a spokesperson for the international community of film-makers, saying this year’s nominees were ‘important, beautiful films that reflect our present crises and the crises of the past’”: www.theguardian.com
[11] www.amnesty.org.au and www.amnesty.org.au
[16] www.people.com and www.youtube.com
[18] As his message to future astronauts, Pilot Victor Glover echoed Koch’s sentiments: “I hope this mission is giving you something that you can take and put in your pocket, or in your heart and mind that you keep with you, but it’s not because we want you to see what we’ve tried to show you. It’s because we want you to take this and build a vocabulary to explain the world to us.” www.nypost.com
[20] Kevin Jagernauth writes that “[t]he filmmaker grapples with a Palestine that is no longer free, its culture stolen, its people continually pushed by force to the edge of their emotional and physical limits”: www.thefilmverdict.com/all-thats-left-of-you/