Cherien Dabis on All That’s Left of You: The Decentralisation of Hollywood and Importance of Independent Filmmaking

Photo by Stephanie Diani

In an ever-increasingly heated global socio-political landscape, it is essential to platform the voices of the unheard and censored. Nominated for Best International Film at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, and winner of Silver Yusr Feature Film at Red Sea International Film Festival, Cherien Dabis’ All That’s Left of You has emerged in an exceptionally essential and polarising time. The film is Dabis’ third feature, created by her own US-based production company, Displaced Pictures, and in collaboration with twelve different independent production companies around the world. 

All That’s Left of You follows three generations of a Palestinian family spanning from 1948 to the 2020s. Opening with the occupation of Jaffa during the 1948 Palestine War, the film offers an insight into the nuances of the Palestinian life under occupation. The generational trauma inflicted upon the central family, is explored through the relationship of grandfather, father, and son. Originally set to film predominantly in Palestine, but moved to production in Jordan and Cyprus, Dabis details the film’s personal and technical intricacies as a product of her directing, producing, and acting process.

How much of your story was external input as opposed to your personal experience?

I think it [All That’s Left of You] was inspired, really, by the generations of my family – seeing how much our identities were formed by what was happening in Palestine, and the depth of the emotional experience that we had surrounding what was happening back home, even when we didn't even live there. I was able to visit Palestine, and I got windows into life under occupation. That all left a deep impression on me. When I was eight years old, and we travelled there, I saw my father harassed and humiliated at the border. That's one of the memories that inspired the scene in the film where a kid sees his dad humiliated in front of him.

How was the filmmaking process of simultaneously being an actor and director? What was your reasoning behind this creative decision?

Because I’m crazy? No, I love doing both. It's very organic to do both, in a way. They're just different sides of the same coin. It's challenging to do both, of course, because they're such radical shifts in perspective. When you're directing, you're looking at the whole world. You see everything very clearly. You know everyone's perspectives, what every character will say and do and you’re in control of them too. However, when you jump into play the role, you have to zoom into the longest lens and just really focus on the perspective of this singular character and forget everything that's about to happen. You have to forget everyone else's perspectives, what everyone's going to be saying and doing, and just live in the moment, and really let go. It’s an interesting tug of war.

When you're in control, let go, and then find control again, I feel like it's definitely a skill that takes time to learn, and I did train for it. I did it in my second feature film as well. I spent about a year and a half training in that specific skill of being on camera, and then directing myself, and watching playback – being able to watch myself objectively and give feedback. It feels a little bit like you're almost playing a mind game. Sometimes as an actor, you have to give yourself permission to get the director out of your head, make her leave the room, and just commit to what's happening in the scene.

Ideally, you have a great crew who you can really trust and feel safe with, because it makes you a much more vulnerable director. I think I've been lucky enough to cultivate the practice of directing myself, and there's more work to do. I find it deeply satisfying, in part, because when I'm acting, I feel like it balances out the control freak in me.

Did you try to distance the production of this film from the new layer of its heightened political relevance in the past two years?

I couldn't. We were actually set to shoot this film in Palestine. We had planned to shoot eighty  percent of it in Palestine, and the rest of it in Cyprus and Jordan. I spent about five months working with a huge crew on the ground, and I also had a foreign crew arrive, and we were only two weeks away from shooting when the events of October 2023 really stopped us in our tracks.

I would have kept going in Palestine, but my foreign crew wanted to go home. They were scared, and their families were worried. We had to start evacuating people just a couple of days after October 7th. As much as I didn't want to leave, I also ended up evacuating. We decided we would shoot Cyprus first and then maybe we'll be able to return to Palestine to pick up where we left off.

The situation just kept escalating there and there was just no way we were able to return. We had been planning to shoot all over the country. We were based in Ramallah, on the West Bank, but the West Bank villages were being sealed off, checkpoints were closing, and movement became extremely difficult. It was difficult from the beginning since we're on occupied territory. We were prepping and going through checkpoints all the time and getting stopped and interrogated. So, we ended up shooting Cyprus and then made a decision to go and start over in Jordan.

Did the film help you work through these different emotions?

The film became a container for all of the grief that we were witnessing, experiencing, feeling, and we put all of the compassion, love, and anger into the film. I think that we really lived the situation in some way. It was like art and life suddenly merged, and here we were, making this movie.

Some days we were shooting scenes that looked an awful lot like what we were seeing coming from our news feeds, and coming out of Gaza. So, it was very intense. We were living the situation and there was no way to escape it. What was happening in the film was almost mirroring what was happening in reality. Everything we went through to get the movie made, and everything we were witnessing as we were making the movie, did really impact it in a subtle way. I think it probably added a lot more weight and depth to the film as well.

You have a history of working both in independent production companies for your features, but with larger, more established ones when it comes to TV. What is your stance on working on independent film?

My TV work is very separate from my film work. I got into television to fill the coffers at a time when I couldn’t make a living as an independent filmmaker. If I'm a producer in television, it's only because I'm a writer. I'm not solely a producer. I've mostly directed and acted in TV in recent years, which has been great because it's helped me to practice my craft. But TV is very Hollywood. It's all set up by major streamers and companies, and for a lot of us filmmakers, TV is a means to an end and an opportunity for us to practice our craft.

On the film side, it has been imperative for me. Making them independently has been the only way that I could get my movies off the ground. Major studios, distributors, streamers are not telling these stories and they don’t want to. They don't even want to pick up these stories once the films are made. So, I think we absolutely need the independent filmmaking community. We need independent productions and independent production companies. This film was entirely financed through European public funds rather than the US or Hollywood, as well as public funds in the Arab world, private equity, and donations. That's what we have to do to get our movies made as Palestinians.

I think filmmaking is becoming decentralised. It's increasingly less about Hollywood, and we've been moving in that direction for quite a while now. The stories coming out of Hollywood are limited and so much nuance and diversity of the world’s views come out of independent cinema. There’s so many worlds that we would never have gotten to see on the big screen if it weren't for independent filmmaking.

Do you expect to continue on with primarily feature films in your future work or are you interested in exploring the series format?

I definitely consider myself a filmmaker first and foremost and have a lot to say. Consequently, I think filmmaking has always been my priority. Working in TV was great because it gave me a great deal of confidence. It takes the average filmmaker five years to make a film. If you haven't directed or acted in the meantime, between those five years, you can show up to set feeling very rusty, and so that's where TV is really great. I had some amazing opportunities in TV, and some of the television shows that I directed and was on, felt like the spirit of my independent filmmaking. I've been lucky enough that some of my TV work has overlapped with my mission as a filmmaker, but I think, in the future, I'm definitely looking towards making more films. I'm sure that if the right opportunities come along in television, I'll also continue to do that as well.

Cherien Dabis’ third feature All That's Left of You was released in UK cinemas on February the 6th, 2026. It is currently still solely available by cinema distribution. It can be watched in select Picturehouse cinemas, and Vue cinemas in the UK and is predicted to run for another month.