Dystopian and Alternate Realities: An Interview with Lyd filmmakers, Sarah Ema Friedland and Rami Younis

[This interview was conducted on April 27, 2024, regarding the film Dystopian and Alternate Realities]

Isis Nusair (IN): How did the idea of the film come about? 

Sarah Ema Friedland (SEF): I am Jewish American. I grew up knowing nothing about the Nakba. I read an article in 2015 about the Nakba in Lyd. It was literally the first time I had been introduced to this topic and it kind of blew my mind. I was very moved to try to do something in the way I know how, which is being a filmmaker. It was obvious that I cannot do it on my own. I reached out to a friend who does solidarity work in Palestine, and she put me in touch with Rami. We started working together and it was originally going to be a short film. The more we worked, the more the film grew in different ways. Seven years later, it ended up being a thrilling science fiction documentary. 

Rami Younis (RY): Sarah got me into filmmaking. I do not know whether to thank her since I am a poor filmmaker now (laughs). I am a journalist and a writer born and raised in Lyd. 

IN: Why did you decide to focus on Lyd?

SEF: Lyd was one of the last cities to fall during the Nakba. People from all over historic Palestine came to Lyd to fight against the Palmach.^[1] It was one of the first capitals of Palestine. It is under talked about both in terms of its historical significance and what happened there in 1948. People talk about Lifta, Tantura, Deir Yassin, but they do not talk about Lyd. 

RY: It is obvious why I want to tell the story of my hometown. I never thought of investigating and researching the past. The more we worked on this film, the more it became evident that this city had a glorious past and rich history. It was the city that connected Palestine to the world. If we had to personify that space, that place, it would be like a diva, a fantastic singer, that has been forgotten and wanted to bring some of its glory days back. There is a line in the film that says that the story of Lyd is the story of Palestine and what happened in 1948. What took place on a small scale in some places happened on a larger scale in Lyd with the massacres, the demolitions, bulldozing the place, and the ghetto.^[2] They bulldozed the old city to prevent the return of Palestinian refugees. It is past due that we focus on Lyd.  

IN: The association with Lyd today is of crime and drugs. We do not know much about the history of the place. 

RY: That is another reason for why it was important to focus on Lyd and offer a different story. We dedicated the film to my childhood friend who was murdered when he was 14 years old.  

IN: I want to ask about the politics of naming. The city itself is a protagonist in the film. It is not just being talked about. It talks about itself, which makes a big difference.  

SEF: The politics of naming is important in the United States. It includes glorifying the people who committed massacres or the heroes of the Civil War. Things are changing slowly. It is like an un-world building. Those who have been the victors had the opportunity to build the world in public space for all of us to walk through in the way they want us to view the place. You see the street signs in Lyd leading to Palmach Square where the massacre took place. It is named after the people who committed the massacre. You get this alternate version of history, the Zionist narrative of history that you are literally walking through. That is why we refer to Lyd as Lyd and not Lod, which is the Hebrew name for the city that Israelis use. It is a choice in stating the position this film is coming from. 

Lyd, Dahmash Mosque (the green sign on the right says in Hebrew Palmach Square)

RY: It is about reclaiming the narrative. We are not the first to do so. DAM did that over twenty years ago.^[3]They would never say Lod. I always say Lyd Airport (not Ben-Gurion Airport). The insistence on naming is important here.  

IN: The city is a protagonist in the film and a memory keeper. Maisa Abd Elhadi^[4] does a great job in narrating the story of the city.

RY: Unfortunately, as Palestinians, we need to keep humanizing ourselves, and remind the world that we are equal human beings who deserve to live in dignity and freedom. We took this to the next level by also personifying and humanizing the city. Since the city was a character, we wanted that character to speak in a certain way and say specific things.  

SEF: Structurally, in terms of the narrative of the film and because we have such a polyvocal film, we have all these different characters. The film is jumping around in time, and we go into alternate realities. It needed to have a narrative spine. It would not work with the film aesthetically if we just had a regular voiceover and only relied on text cards. It was a creative choice, but also a functional one to hold all the threads together.  

RY: We started by making a straightforward documentary. We wanted to tell the story of what has been happening in the city since 1948. How do you retell a story that has been told so many times? How do you draw more people to it? 

IN: You chose for the narrator to be a woman and not a man. We usually have this deep voiceover of the narrator who holds the truth. Is it because of the association of femininity with the homeland?  

SEF: The land is often personified as a woman. You also have the trope of raping the land or colonists coming and pillaging the land. Maybe in the back of our minds some of that was there. How do you flip the narrative? How do you make this strong female character who represents the land advocate for herself and tell her own history?  

IN: You finished the film just before October 7, 2023. One of the hardest things for me while watching the film was the constant reminder in many of the scenes of what we are witnessing today in Gaza. It is as if we are reliving the Nakba of 1948.  

SEF: One of the things the film roots itself in is the horrific massacre that took place at the Dahmash Mosque in Lyd in 1948. This was only one of the violent occurrences that took place when the Palmach invaded the city. It is the one that people talk about the most. Until this day, there is a plaque at the entrance to the mosque that says, “A horrible massacre happened here.” It is one of the rare occurrences where the Palestinian narrative is part of the built environment. We tell this story from the perspective of Palestinian survivors of the Nakba, mainly Eissa Fanous who was twelve years old when the massacre took place. It was important to get these testimonies from the generation that survived the Nakba. Two of the people we interviewed, Eissa and Um-Hassan, died during the making of the film.  

We had access to footage from the Palmach Archive that was never seen. That footage was taken in 1989 where Palmach members talked about the war crimes they committed in Lyd. They are proud of this history, and that contributes to the harmful imaginary of the Nakba as a “War of Independence,” which is a mythology that is crucial to sustaining the occupation for Israelis and American Jews. We need to build up the archives of survivors and there are amazing groups, like Zochrot,^[5] who are doing this. We also want the film to be viewed as an archive of people who survived this moment, telling it from their perspective. 

RY: I keep thinking about the interview with Eissa and how surprising and shocking it was. He was a young boy when the massacre happened. Suddenly, he starts talking about being taken with four other children a week after the massacre to pull decomposed body parts out of the mosque so Palmach members can bury them. It was a shock to us because we have not talked about this before. We are grateful for him for sharing that account and for speaking up. It was very hard for him. He wanted to speak but was very traumatized. Yet, once Eissa started talking, it was like a flood. He kept this locked inside for so long. It breaks our heart that he passed away before the film was finished. 

IN: You interview Lydians who live in the West Bank. Lyd is an imaginary for them before you even present the science fiction part because it is something that is so close yet so impossible to reach or return to. 

RY: We filmed in Balata and Askar refugee camps.^[6] In regard to how different generations imagine the possibility of going back to Lyd, the right of return was at work here. The characters dubbed themselves and were part of the creative process of creating the alternate reality. 

SEF: Another reason for why we chose Balata Refugee Camp is that we were working with the Jaffa Cultural Center, and they connected us with the Lydian refugees in Balata. 

Lyd, Tarteer Family, Balata Refugee Camp 

RY: It was important to pay tribute to the refugee camp and to the people of the camp. It was also important to show what it feels like to live there. When I needed to record the voices of some of the characters, it was difficult to find a quiet corner. It is a dense place.   

IN: You can grow up within the Israeli educational system not knowing much about Palestinian history. Yet, the daily reality itself is very politicizing, it urges you to want to learn and create these alternative spaces.  

RY: I am a product of the Israeli public school system. You learn the history of the Jewish people by learning the Zionist narrative while not learning much about your own history. My work as a journalist and writer revolves around identity issues. We were asked the other day about what will prompt Palestinians to create an alternate reality. I do not think we are in that place yet. We first need to go back to the roots and educate Palestinians to let them know they are Lydians. After we know where we come from and solidify that shared collective identity, then we can start talking about alternate realities.

IN: There is also the time element. The expectation was that the more time passes, the more people will forget. The children in the film show that unless you educate them, they will forget.  

Lyd, Real and animated classrooms

RY: We show what happened in May 2021. Lyd was the epicenter of the Unity Intifada (هبة الكرامة). There were Palestinian flags and people demonstrating against Israeli settlers, against the police, and against the Jewish establishment. They were showing solidarity with what was happening in Sheikh Jarrah and the planned displacement and expulsion of Palestinians. They were also showing solidarity with Gaza. When things get heated, people in Lyd discover a shared collective unity that is not always made public. 

Lyd, Demonstration against house demolitions in May 2021 

IN: I want to ask about the archive and how it is linked to memory. You use different drone shots and archival footage, and speak about obtaining this kind of footage and the telling and retelling of these narratives and memories.

SEF: Accessing the footage was through the Palmach Archive in Ramat Aviv. We told them that we were making a film about Lyd and 1948. Maybe because I am an American Jew and my name is Sarah Friedland, they assumed that we were telling the story from a perspective that they would agree with, or maybe they just do not care. We obtained the footage legally and people have different reactions to it. It was important not to tell the story of the 1948 invasion of Lyd only from the Palmach perspective. The film has three Nakba survivors, three different elders who tell different pieces of that history, starting with Eissa Fanous and the massacre, then continuing with the people in Balata Refugee Camp who talk about the expulsion. That is part of the polyvocality of the film where somebody starts a story, and then someone else picks it up along the way. 

We shot the drone footage ourselves. One of our producers brought a drone. I initially did not want the drone footage since it is associated with the military and surveillance. Now I am glad we have that footage. Whenever you see that footage, that is when you hear the voice of Lyd. She is in the air of the city. Hopefully it works differently than signaling surveillance or an overproduced documentary with fancy images.  

Lyd, Drone shot of public square

To cut back and forth between the Palmach archival footage and present day Lyd, we created matching shots to visually indicate that the Nakba is ongoing. Shmaryahu Gutman, one of the commanders of the Palmach, starts that sequence. He was standing by a house, a Palestinian house, when he was filmed in 1989. We were able to find that exact location and film there in the present and do these kind of match cuts so that when we go back and forth between the two time periods, it is always with an awareness of the memory in this place. 

IN: When did you get access to the Palmach archive? It will probably be near impossible to have access now. 

RY: It was in 2016. We went to that archive twice. We looked for the footage and spent hours going through it. This is where our partnership pays off. As a Palestinian, I would never think of going to that place because it represents pain and atrocities.  Sarah, having an outside perspective, had a healthier approach. She said, “What do you have to lose? Let's see what they have there.” We struggled but were able to find never seen footage of Palmach members essentially saying there were women and children in the mosque. The official Zionist narrative when it comes to the Dahmash Mosque massacre is that there were only “jihadis” there. We show in the film testimonies from the Palmach that it was not the case and that war crimes were committed.  

IN: You were very creative in how you built this imaginary in the science fiction part. I was fascinated by the reference to George Habash, Hannah Arendt, and Khalil Sakakini and what it said about the history of the city before and after 1948.    

Lyd, Animated Hannah Arendt Lecture Hall

SEF: We were originally making a straightforward documentary. We were invited with the Palestinian Film Institute in 2018 to pitch at Cannes Film Festival as part of the first Palestinian Pavilion. It was an amazing experience. It was there that we thought that we would not want to watch the film we were making. There was nothing liberatory about it. I love science fiction. I mainly read but also watch science fiction films. There is a long history associating science fiction with liberation. I will speak from my perspective, and it is obviously very different for Rami. As an American Jew, we are literally taught an alternate reality, taught an alternate history. The Zionist project of creating the state of Israel is a world building project. The reality we live in is like science fiction, and that surrealness was one of the biggest inspirations for the science fiction elements of the film. 

To build a nation, you need to create a mythology. The mythology of the state of Israel that we all are taught and kind of brainwashed with is what sustains the occupation. It is so deep. We already talked about changing names on streets and calling Lyd Lod. The name Lod comes from ancient Jewish biblical texts, it is a process of resurrecting these ancient names to prove some kind of indigeneity. There is also the process of resurrecting ancient biblical Jewish names for the same reason when Jewish people immigrate to Israel and change their names to become Israeli, for example David Ben Gurion was born David Grün. This is so interesting to me because when Jews immigrated here, to the U.S., our names were changed not by choice, in order to become American. I see both as a form of erasing our diasporic Jewish cultures. There is so much worldbuilding in the project of the nation state. For us, it was important to draw on these tools that have been used by the oppressor in building our own reality.

I had to do a lot of learning and unlearning throughout this process. I did a lot of historical research. I was really inspired by Salim Tamari’s book, Mountain Against the Sea and the memoirs of Palestinians before European colonization of Palestine. Khalil Sakakini is talked about in that book together with the project he started in Christian schools where they would use the Quran to teach Arabic. I believe in the diaspora and have always been inspired by Hannah Arendt and her essay, “We Refugees.” The diaspora in this context is kind of an Avant Garde, the forefront. I wanted to pay homage to her and to the kind of breath she breathed into Jewish identity.  

Lyd, Animated Khalil Sakakini School

RY: The alternate reality that we created is not a utopia. When we developed the alternate reality, we started viewing the documentary footage with the actual reality as dystopian because it looks so depressing. There is a scene at the school with the students not knowing their Palestinian identity. We recreated that scene in the alternate reality. It was about Palestinian privilege and helping the less fortunate. 

Lyd, Animated Jehad

We talk about George Habash and Khalil Sakakini. We planted these hidden messages to get people to think about the “what if, if history was different” questions. George Habash, founder of the Popular Front (for the Liberation of Palestine), was a revolutionary. He was revered yet also demonized by so many. He had a great influence on the global left. He came from Lyd. In the alternate reality we examine what would have happened if there was no occupation in 1948, his sister had not been killed, and he did not become a refugee. He would have no reason to start the Popular Front.

SEF: Since he was a scholar and a physician, we figured he would have been a famous intellectual and why not name a university after him.

IN: Last time I was in Lyd in 2021, they took us for a tour in the city and showed us the clinic where George Habash used to work. They also showed us the expulsion route towards Ramallah. That was the only road refugees could take if they wanted to stay alive. Can you speak about ruptures and rebuilding in the film?

Lyd, Recreation

RY: There is tension between the alternate reality and the dystopian reality, where one reality is trying to take over the other. That is why we created the rupture. We imagined that what happened in 1948 was so traumatizing that it created a rupture in space and time where one reality could seep into the other. We figured that would be an entry point for introducing the science fiction part. 

Lyd, Recreation

All around, there are remnants of old soap factories that belonged to the big families in the city. These are beautiful, ancient buildings. Today, they are deserted, neglected, and falling apart. No one is renovating or maintaining them because they do not relate to the Zionist past and do not support the Zionist narrative. The rebuilding part is within the dystopian reality. These buildings deserve recognition because they are part of the history of the place. Lyd had a glorious past and rich history. It was very important for us to rebuild the old soap factories, Khan El Hilu, and the bridge. 

Lyd, Real and animated soap factory

SEF: The whole thing is about the importance of radical imagination. adrienne maree brown urges us to use the imagination to build the world we want to see. For the whole time, we are seeing the alternate reality seep into the dystopian reality but not the other way around. 

IN: That reminds me of the Saint George story in the film. That is what Lyd is known for, its association with Saint George. 

Lyd, Animated Eissa and Saint George statue

RY: Manar says in the alternate reality, that before it became fashionable to see skinny blonde girls riding dragons and slaying them, we had Saint George who is buried in Lyd. His mother is Lydian. This was a holiday in which Muslims and Christian Palestinians celebrated the patron and symbol of the city, Saint George. It is no longer a holiday for the entire city because of the divide and conquer policies of the Israeli establishment. In the alternate reality, we wanted to show that everyone celebrate that holiday including Muslims and Jews. 

Lyd, Animated newsreel

SEF: This is another place where the past informs the present. Before European colonization, and we know this from Ottoman census records, 5% of Palestine was Jewish. These were Jewish Palestinians. We have records of Christians and Muslins celebrating Purim together. 5% is not that much, but that is more than the percentage of the Jewish people in the US today, so it is significant. Another thing that is kind of erased in the Zionist narrative is that there are and were and will continue to be Arab Jews. We are told that Arab countries were never safe for the Jewish people. This is not true. 

IN: Tell us about your collaboration and how it kept the project going. 

RY: We figured that we are making a film that is not very traditional, an unorthodox film, and maybe its funding needs to be unorthodox. We had an Indiegogo campaign and later Roger Waters became our executive producer. Because it is a Palestinian and an American film, we got support from the New York State Council on the Arts. We also received support from the Religion, Conflict and Peace Initiative at Harvard Divinity School.  

When Palestinians talk about the occupation, they talk about 1948 as the root of all evil. Others, in the West and especially liberal Zionists, would want you to believe that the occupation started in 1967, and what had happened in 1948 was just a necessity, a national necessity. I do not even have words to describe what is happening right now in Gaza. To fix the present, we need to go back to the past.  

IN: What about the reception of the film? 

RY: We decided for the premier to be in Amman, Jordan (at the Amman International Film Festival in August 2023). We chose Amman because it has a large population of Palestinian and specifically Lydian refugees. We saw the profound impact the film had on them, especially the alternate reality part. Seeing this alternate reality of the place they were dreaming of was empowering. The film contributes to imagining that place and how return might look like. 

We released the film in August. It was before the genocide. Some people did not want to see it, support it, nor become part of it. We did win the Feature Length Documentary Award in Amman, Jordan. The film sold out and we had to have a third screening. The genocide is attracting more attention to the film, and that is unfortunate. It should not be like that. 

SEF: It was hard to make this film. When we screened the film last August in Amman, Jordan, it sold out and we needed to have an additional third screening. It worked for the public, and we won the Critics Association Award. That was incredibly validating.  We had other people who believed in us like MAD Solutions, our Egyptian distribution partners. Now we also have distribution in North America from Icarus Films. We are getting so much interest in this film that nobody wanted to see before because of the genocide in Gaza. This happens with documentary films all the time. When there is a tragedy, you start looking for something that speaks about what is happening. I am happy we have a resource for people to put in context. It is also devastating that it took a genocide to get the visibility we are getting now. 

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