Some­thing very bad hap­pened to Agnes. It’s hint­ed at in the first seg­ment of Sor­ry, Baby, when her best friend Lydie (Nao­mi Ack­ie) arrives for a vis­it, and asks Agnes (Eva Vic­tor) if she feels com­fort­able hav­ing the office of their old Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Pre­ston Deck­er (Louis Can­cel­mi). It’s fair­ly easy to infer what Lydie means by this, par­tic­u­lar­ly once they go for din­ner at the home of their for­mer class­mate Natasha (Kel­ly McCor­ma­ck) and she snark­i­ly remarks that Agnes was always ​“Decker’s favourite”. Lydie polite­ly changes the sub­ject and gives Agnes’s leg a reas­sur­ing squeeze.

There has been a del­uge of films about sex­u­al assault in the wake of MeToo, but for all the artis­tic cap­i­tal (right­ful­ly) afford­ed to sur­vivors, pre­cious lit­tle has mate­ri­al­ly changed with­in cul­ture. Some­times it feels as if there’s more resent­ment than ever towards vic­tims for dar­ing speak­ing up – it’s this real­i­ty that Eva Victor’s direc­to­r­i­al debut (which she wrote and stars in) cap­tures so well, in which a woman is sex­u­al­ly assault­ed by a man in a posi­tion of trust, and the accord­ing fall-out is the lack of fall-out. Noth­ing in the world at large changes; every­thing does in hers, revealed in non-chrono­log­i­cal order, with a chap­ter for each year fol­low­ing the assault. When she goes to see a (male) doc­tor fol­low­ing her assault, he chas­tis­es her for not going to the ER imme­di­ate­ly after­wards. He seems com­plete­ly indif­fer­ent to the trau­mat­ic inci­dent Agnes has expe­ri­enced; all Agnes and Lydie can do in response is laugh.

What else can Agnes do? The per­pe­tra­tor has already hand­ed in his notice at col­lege, and the school claim they’re unable to open a case against him as a result. Agnes doesn’t want to press charges against him because he has a child – and if she’s treat­ed like an incon­ve­nience by med­ical staff and her school, who’s to say the police would be any dif­fer­ent? So Agnes inter­nalis­es her pain. Over the course of the next four years, she lives her life in the same apart­ment she shared with Lydie dur­ing grad school, and teach­es at the same col­lege she used to attend. There’s an unspo­ken sense that Agnes can’t quite move on from the place; she sleep­i­ly haunts it, unable to find clo­sure because no one – except Lydie – under­stands or acknowl­edges what hap­pened to her.

It’s the banal­i­ty of endur­ing a sex­u­al assault that Vic­tor cap­tures so well in her film; how the trau­ma lingers long in the body, even when you keep insist­ing to every­one (includ­ing your­self) that you’re fine. When Agnes begins a ten­ta­tive romance with her sweet neigh­bour Gavin (Lucas Hedges) she doesn’t quite know how to respond to his affec­tion; when she has a pan­ic attack in her car, a gruff sand­wich shop own­er (John Car­roll Lynch) coach­es her through it and then makes her some food. These small moments of kind­ness – as well as the beau­ti­ful friend­ship between Agnes and Lydie – glim­mer like flecks of gold on the bot­tom of a murky riverbed, demon­strat­ing there is still some good in the world despite what hap­pened to her. Good that also exists in Agnes’ cat Olga, who she finds on the street as a kit­ten days after her assault, even if she even­tu­al­ly has to euthanise a mouse left in her bed.

This sur­pris­ing­ly vio­lent mer­cy killing feels like an odd­ly cathar­tic moment for Agnes, who is sym­bol­ic of thou­sands of peo­ple who nev­er receive jus­tice after being assault­ed, and reflects the strange rhythms of Sor­ry, Baby – a film which doesn’t pre­tend to have all the answers, but cer­tain­ly under­stands the bur­den of shame placed on sex­u­al assault sur­vivors, and how nav­i­gat­ing the world in the after­math of assault feels like walk­ing through dense fog, blind­ing reach­ing for a hand to guide you to the oth­er side.

As of 2007, the Lev­an­tine nation of Pales­tine had already been under Israeli occu­pa­tion for exact­ly forty years. This pre­cise era is where twin Gazan direc­tors, Arab and Tarzan Nass­er, opt to trans­port us to for their lat­est cin­e­mat­ic homage to their unlaw­ful­ly besieged home, Once Upon A Time In Gaza. As with their pre­vi­ous for­ays into film­mak­ing, the broth­ers shot the film in Jor­dan, a neigh­bour­ing coun­try and state of refuge for many dis­placed Pales­tini­ans, includ­ing the direc­tors who fled Gaza in 2012. This removal from the strip is for the sake of safe­ty, but also has the effect of evok­ing a ver­sion of the city that was in no way per­fect, but now fails to exist entire­ly. The tan­gi­ble long­ing and affec­tion for their moth­er­land serve as a reminder that the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple will con­tin­ue to per­sist and fight for their liberation.

Osama (Majd Eid) owns a seem­ing­ly incon­se­quen­tial falafel shop, which fre­quent­ly oper­ates under the super­vi­sion of his only employ­ee, Yahya (Nad­er Abd Alhay). The fun-sized restau­rant serves up fluffy stuffed pita breads on fresh­ly torn sheets of news­pa­per, inked with head­lines detail­ing the rad­i­cal resis­tance move­ment Hamas’s rise to pow­er, a retal­ia­to­ry result of the grotesque Israeli occupation.

How­ev­er, falafel isn’t their only offer­ing. Despite his hes­i­ta­tion, Yahya fol­lows instruc­tions to tuck alu­mini­um tabs of crim­son red pills, which Osama sources through forged pre­scrip­tions and phar­ma­cy crawls, under­neath the deep-fried snacks in a select few sand­wich­es, until a run-in with Abou Simi (Ramzi Maq­disi), a cor­rupt high-rank­ing police offi­cer in the nar­cotics divi­sion, has fatal repercussions.

Two years lat­er, Yahya remains haunt­ed by the mur­der of his only com­pan­ion and leads a soli­tary exis­tence, until he is scout­ed by a direc­tor (Issaq Elias) poised to cre­ate an 80s-esque hyper­styl­ized action flick turned pro­pa­gan­da project titled The Rebel. Yahya is an unas­sum­ing choice to play the tit­u­lar rebel and quick­ly becomes a sym­bol of the rev­o­lu­tion. He’s painful­ly shy and has lit­tle assertive­ness, but his lack of self-assur­ance makes him a per­fect­ly mold­able fig­ure to be the Min­istry of Culture’s mouthpiece.

At times, the bal­ance of the­atri­cal­i­ty and dark com­e­dy in Once Upon A Time In Gaza becomes rem­i­nis­cent of a medi­um known across the MENA region as Musal­salat – soap operas (most com­mon­ly pro­duced in Egypt) that tack­le social and polit­i­cal com­men­tary, which air night­ly through­out the month of Ramadan. The melo­dra­ma derives from rich cul­tur­al speci­fici­ty that lends itself well to this tale of love, loss, and unrest.

The film is divid­ed into these two sol­id chap­ters, but they don’t quite click togeth­er to become a sin­gu­lar cohe­sive piece. Nev­er­the­less, the cre­ative swings tak­en by the Nass­er Broth­ers to craft some­thing that breaks free from the country’s gloomy mod­ern sub­text and explores a real­i­ty beyond the ongo­ing geno­cide are some­thing to be gen­uine­ly admired.

That’s not to say that it evades dis­cussing the decades of suf­fer­ing which Pales­tini­ans have been sub­ject­ed to. Still, it finds ways to weave webs of sub­text, rather than becom­ing a super­cut of fetishized tragedy intend­ed for West­ern con­sump­tion. Despite the seem­ing­ly nev­er-end­ing cycle of dev­as­ta­tion and rev­o­lu­tion, the Nass­er Broth­ers refuse to let their resilience and opti­mism for the future slip, con­clud­ing with the hope­ful mes­sage that one day it will end.

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