Synopsis:

On October 14, 2023, a white-American man is watching TV news about Gaza in his home in Chicago. He becomes enraged by the news, “all these Palestinians are terrorists!” he yells, as he grabs a knife, walks to the home of his Palestinian neighbor, and stabs six-year-old child Wadee Al-Fayoumi 26 times, killing him. This brutal act of hate stuns Chicago’s ‘Little Palestine’—the largest community of Palestinians in the UnitedStates.

A weekly protest against the genocide begins the day after Wadeea’s funeral. People in Chicago bear witness through social-media videos from Gaza, even as they watch mainstream American news manufacture another narrative about what’s happening. We see visually a city rise up to try to stop the genocide, from university encampments, protests, direct actions, boycotts, voter mobilization etc. We document the beginning of a government crackdown against activists, first under President Biden and then President Trump… Palestinian activists are kidnaped, detained and deported by Trump's immigration police… this quickly evolves from targeting anti-war activists to targeting all Americans. The genocide in Gaza becomes the bellwether for a crackdown against democracy and the advent of fascism in the U.S.

This film deconstructs how a media narrative that dehumanized Palestinians lead directly to the murder of one Palestinian child in Chicago and the mass killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza. Over and over again, power intervened in the historical production of the genocide to erase Palestinians and silence their story. This enabled Israel’s mass killing and destruction in Gaza, and the U.S.financing of the genocide, to continue unabated. We track how and when power entered the story, while documenting the Palestinian community in Chicago rallying to stop a genocide and resist erasure through the creation of a counter-narrative.

Director

ASSIA BOUNDAOUI is a award-winning Algerian-American filmmaker and journalist. Her debut short film J'ADORE NAWAL set in an Arab women’s hair salon in Chicago for HBO Films premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Her award-winning feature-length film, THE FEELING OF BEING WATCHED a documentary investigating a decade of FBI surveillance in her Arab-American community, world premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival and was broadcast on PBS and Al Jazeera. Her most recent short film ESTRANGED LETTERS had its world premiere at the 2024 Chicago International Film Festival.

Producer

JIHAN EL-TAHRI is an Egyptian-French filmmaker who is a director, producer, writer and visual artist. Her award winning documentaries include NASSER which premiered in the official selection at the 2015 Toronto International Festival, BEHIND THE RAINBOW, CUBA: AN AFRICAN ODYSSEY and the Emmy nominated HOUSE OF SAUD.