From Ground Zero Review: Twenty-Two Voices From Gaza

Is From Ground Zero good?

Yes — it is one of the most urgent anthology films of the decade, and the numbers back that up. With a Critic Score of 93, an Audience Score of 81, and a Metascore of 79, From Ground Zero lands as a rare consensus pick across critics and viewers alike, and its 3.8 on Letterboxd and 7.9 on IMDb suggest the film holds up even after the initial festival attention fades. What makes it exceptional isn’t polish — it’s the sheer improbability of its existence, assembled by filmmakers working under conditions no film school prepares you for.

What is From Ground Zero about?

It’s a collection of more than twenty short films made by Palestinian directors living through the war in Gaza that began after the October 7, 2023 attacks. Rather than a single filmmaker’s perspective, the anthology weaves together dozens of first-person accounts of daily life amid bombardment — some funny, some devastating, some strange and dreamlike — stitched together under the curation of Reema Mahmoud. The effect is closer to a mosaic than a documentary: no single segment claims to speak for the whole, and the gaps between stories say as much as the stories themselves.

Should you watch From Ground Zero?

Yes, with the understanding that this is a film to sit with rather than simply enjoy. The strong critic and audience numbers reflect real consensus that the anthology succeeds at something conventional war documentaries rarely attempt — showing plurality instead of a single flattening narrative. At 100 minutes it moves quickly between tones, and the shifts between dark comedy and raw grief are jarring by design. It isn’t comfortable viewing, but the scores across every platform suggest audiences who go in prepared come away affected rather than alienated.

How does From Ground Zero compare to Waltz with Bashir?

Waltz with Bashir, the 2008 animated documentary about the Lebanon War, is a useful point of comparison because both films wrestle with how to represent war truthfully when direct footage is incomplete or impossible. Where Waltz with Bashir uses animation and a single director’s memory to approach trauma obliquely, From Ground Zero takes the opposite route — multiplying perspectives rather than filtering them through one artistic lens. Both resist tidy narrative arcs in favor of fragmentation, but From Ground Zero’s power comes specifically from its plurality of authorship: twenty-two filmmakers refusing to let any single voice, including an outside one, speak for their experience.