Origin: Palestine | Documentary | Director: Michael Winterbottom, Mohammed Sawwaf | 81 minutes

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Eleven Days in May is a documentary about the children who were killed in Gaza during Israel’s 11-day bombardment last May. At least 60 of the almost 200 Palestinian victims were children, but the exact figure is impossible to verify. The film opens with BBC News footage of the airstrikes – the type viewers are familiar with, “but then tend to forget about,” says Winterbottom – before running through the conflict chronologically, telling the viewer about the children who died each day, via interviews with 28 families.

Kate Winslet provides the voiceover, Max Richter the soundtrack. Neither do more than they need. It is spare, respectful and overwhelming.

“We wanted to keep it as simple as possible, almost like a photo album,” says Winterbottom. “The format wasn’t intended to give dramatic or emotional shape. But you hope it gradually accumulates some sort of emotional power – and gives a fair moment for each family.”

Winterbottom had the idea for the film and edited the footage, which was shot in liaison with Mohammed Sawwaf, a local film-maker, to whom I speak, over a video and through an interpreter in his office on the Gaza Strip.

It is hard to hear over the constant clatter and traffic and endless internet blips (emailing the rushes to the UK was an epic undertaking). This building, says Sawwaf, gesturing around, is one of the few on the block not yet razed and rebuilt.

“Initially, most families refused to take part,” Sawwaf says. “It needed a great deal of persuasion.” This was done by the families consulting each other and Sawwaf telling them: “Your child is not a number. You should show the world that these are people who had aspirations and who ceased to exist.”

In the film, we don’t hear or see Sawwaf, only the bereaved relatives, including prolonged shots as they compose themselves before speaking: parents and grandparents facing down the lens; children shifting uncertainly, sometimes giggling, sometimes wiping away tears.

Sawwaf was amazed by the resilience of the parents: “The refusal to remember their children in a dark light. If, God forbid, I were in their shoes, I wouldn’t have the courage to talk.”

(The Guardian - April 28, 2022)

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