Cast Lead

Stefano Savona

One can’t get in or out of Gaza. It’s January 6, 2009, the eleventh day of the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip. Air-raid bombings and intensifying land attacks are taking place behind the insurmountable wall which separates Gaza from the rest of the world, but  witnesses  have been unable to penetrate the Strip to date. It’s been impossible to force the air-tight block to the international press imposed by occupying forces. Only the dead, the wounded, and some trucks bringing medication pass the Egyptian frontier. Those come to describe the war have to make do with the odd  phrase snatched from first-aid helpers, as all lenses point towards the dense columns of black smoke rising in the distance from between the houses on the other side. All of a sudden, as if by chance, a tiny crack in the impermeable defence system occurs, and a very small number of people manage to get in. Amongst them, a director with a TV camera. This film is about what that camera was able to film across the border, the simple tale, using those images, of daily life in Gaza during the last tragic days of operation ‘Cast Lead’.