🇵🇸PFF 2024 Film Review - Lyd
Images courtesy of Original Spin.
Lyd, which recently played at Melbourne's Palestinian Film Festival, is a cinematic exploration of the city formerly known as Lyd, a place with a rich and tumultuous history that has been shaped by its many inhabitants and the broader geopolitical forces at play. Despite its initial use as a hub that connected Palestine with the rest of the world, a mass exile saw Israel take the former capital as one of their own, and it has now devolved from being a place of great cultural and industrial significance to an Israeli slum known as Lod. Directed by Rami Younis and Sarah Ema Friedland, this documentary is a profound reflection on identity, memory, and the inexorable passage of time
The film is a masterful blend of historical documentation and speculative fiction, mixing sci-fi concepts and animations to explore the many paths the city could have gone down. This innovative approach allows Lyd to transcend the traditional boundaries of documentary filmmaking, as it invites viewers to imagine alternate histories and futures for the city. The narrative is anchored by the city's formative changes during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the Nakba, a great catastrophe that saw Israeli military forces push hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into exile, in one of history's most prolific moments of cultural displacement.
Through a series of interviews, archival footage, and animated sequences, Lyd paints a vivid picture of a city that has bore witness to history's many turns. The directors' use of drone shots offers a bird's-eye view of the city, providing a sense of the scale and complexity of the urban landscape, while also symbolizing the detached and often impersonal nature of historical narratives. The emotional core of the documentary is embodied by Maisa Abd Elhadi, who lends her voice to the city of Lyd itself, as it recounts its many shifts through time. Her performance is both haunting and evocative, cold and distant in its matter-of-factness, while serving as a conduit for the city's collective memory and the personal stories of its residents.
But Lyd is not content to merely recount historical events and educate outsiders on the culture of its people; it challenges its audience to engage with the material on a deeper level. The film asks probing questions about the nature of history, the stories we choose to remember, and those we decide to forget. Through interviews with survivors of the Nakba, we hear stories of young children being forced to move rotted human remains by IDF soldiers, now told by an aging man. We see archival interviews from IDF members who conducted the siege. A commandant audibly spells out the denial he used to justify his actions, stating that “there were no women and children” in the mosque he fired on, repeating it again, almost as if to assure himself, while another soldier recounts with great regret how he witnessed a woman and child injured in a mosque, begging for their lives to be spared in Yiddish. It is a reminder that history is not just a series of dates and events but a living, breathing entity that continues to shape our present and future. That these events continue to have great effects on their participants, both willing and unwilling.
Lyd is a film that defies easy categorisation. It is at once a historical record, a speculative journey, and a deeply personal story, its power lying in its ability to connect with viewers on an emotional level while also engaging them intellectually. It is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the enduring quest for identity and belonging in a world that is constantly in turmoil. Lyd is a must-watch for anyone interested in understanding more of the deep roots the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict has, covering over a hundred years of history in just under 80 minutes.
Follow Eli on Letterboxd, Twitter/X and Instagram.
Lyd screened as part of the 2024 Palestinian Film Festival. For more info, click here.
Donate to the UNICEF Children of Gaza Crisis Emergency Appeal here.