All That’s Left of You [اللي باقي منك]
(2025 | Germany/Cyprus | 145 minutes | Cherien Dabis)

A kinetic opening sequence begins with two teens in friendly pursuit through the roofs and alleys of the occupied West Bank in 1988 and ends with the shattering shock of a stray bullet through a street protest. Writer/director Cherien Dabis (who also stars in the film) takes this tragedy as inciting motivation to delve into decades of Palestinian forced migration, indignities, resilience, and compassion through the lens of one family.

She traces their journey through pivotal time points: a businessman’s expulsion from Jaffa to an internment in a forced labor camp in 1948, his son’s life as an idealistic teacher in a refugee camp in 1978, the teen’s life a decade later in 1988, and beyond into a powerful present day coda. While there is occasional over-reliance on make-up to capture the long sweep of history, Dabis benefits greatly from casting a trio of related actors to portray key characters at different timepoints. Adam Bakri portrays the paterfamilias in 1948; his father Mohammad Bakri takes on the role as an influential grandfather, broken by time and experience; and brother Saleh inhabits the lead role as his son across multiple time periods.

Although the historical elements can feel like ever-so-slightly didactic flashbacks, they are in service of conveying the emotional toll that the conflict has taken on a vibrant family and in conveying their enduring resilience to generations of aggressions on their humanity. When the film returns to its present day and the title’s meaning becomes apparent, the epic scope collapses to something powerfully personal, intimate, and illuminating.

All That’s Left of You (اللي باقي منك) played as an official selection of the Premieres section at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is now Jordan’s entry for the Best International Film for the upcoming Oscars. You can see it this weekend in Seattle at the Beacon and through Grand Illusion’s presentation at SIFF Film Center.

---

An earlier version of this review ran as part of the SunBreak’s coverage of Sundance 2025.