All That’s Left of You premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was featured at the Adelaide Film Festival, it was the Jordanian Official Entry for the Academy Awards, and it won the Audience Favourite Award at the 2025 Sydney Film Festival as well as winning other awards. All That’s Left of You is an engrossing and moving account of a Palestinian family spanning three generations from 1948 to 2022.
All That’s Left of You is divided into four parts, the first part is set in 1948 at the start of the Israeli annexation of Jaffa where younger Sharif (Adam Bakri) and his family, including his young son Salim (Salah El Din) live on the lands of their traditional family home and orange orchard. With the increase in tensions, the family relocates to a refugee camp while Shaif stays behind to protect the house and orchard and he joins them later.
The second part is set thirty years later in 1978 and focuses on older Salim (Saleh Bakri) who has become a school teacher in the West Bank, his wife Hanan (Cherien Dabis), their young son Noor (Sanad Alkabareti) and the older Sharif (Mohammad Bakri).
The third part is set ten years after that in 1988 where teenaged Noor (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) is shot while joining a protest and after being taken to hospital and pronounced as brain dead his parents are faced with the choice of organ donation. The final part is set in 2022 with the aged Salim and Hanan returning to Jaffa.
In the first part of All That’s Left of You, Sharif teaches Salim a part of the poem by Egyptian poet Muhammad Hafiz Ibrahim, “I am the sea/ In my depths all my treasures dwell/ Have they asked the divers about my pearls?” This theme runs throughout the film.
In addition to her role as Hanan, Cherien Dabis is the screenwriter and director of All That’s Left of You. With the burdens of relocating production to Cyprus, Greece and Jordan and a narrative that spans eighty years, Dabis has produced an absorbing two and a half hour film helped by outstanding performances by the whole cast.
Reviewed by Rob McKinnon
Rating; 5 out of 5
Official trailer: All That’s Left of You Official Trailer
Distributor: Cultural Media
Engrossing and moving account of a Palestinian family spanning three generations from 1948 to 2022.
