Born in Gaza or 'Nacido en Gaza' is a Spanish documentary directed by Hernán Zin that was released on the 12th day of December year 2014. This was filmed shortly after the 2014 Israeli-Palestinian War and this documentary examines the effects of the Israel-Palestine conflict on Palestinian children. A series of candid interviews with a group of children who had been deeply affected by the violence provided the backbone of the film. The effects of war are within the victims, to know the devastation, dive into what the people have seen, heard, and went through.

 

Hernán Zin narrates the story of ten young children, between the ages of 6 and 13, through a film, instead of an adult voice. They include Mohamed, who rummages through rubbish for items to sell; Udai, who witnessed his older brother die; Mahmud, the son of a farmer whose land has been deemed unfit and whose camels and lambs have been killed by the airstrikes; Rajaf, whose father was killed while attempting to save lives in his emergency vehicle; and Sondos, a young girl with a seriously injured stomach.

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The purpose of this film was to show a different side of the war. There are no explosives and no bodies in this perspective. Instead of the normal quick motions seen in war documentaries, this video took its time. They sought to get into the people, in this case, the children, despite the fact that they were in the midst of a battle since he believes that the effects of war are inside the people.

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Though the director succeeded in showing the situation of the Palestinian victims, the impact of the war on the side of the enemy was never mentioned, nor was the blame for the instability of the parents of the children. To be fair, if we discuss about the victims of war, the people who are living in the devastated area should have been included in the documentary. The documentary was informative and it achieved its purpose to let the viewers see the perspective and condition of the children the director conducted an interview with. The language used has a diction that is congruous. If we talk about appropriateness, the film was not gory that it is suitable for every viewer who wished to watch, devastating yet it would help them understand more about what happened during the war.

 

The approach is Subjective since the statement of the victim, Rajaf, sum it up best: "I'd like to join the resistance and bring justice to my father." Obviously what is being sowed in Gaza is animosity, not crops. The stark numbers behind the horrors, particularly those related to the number of dead and maimed children, are printed plainly onscreen. The catastrophic devastation wreaked by the assaults in the middle of the war is revealed repeatedly in aerial shots in this usually well-looking documentary especially at the hospital where Sondos is a patient. The children are occasionally seen moving through the wreckage in slow motion, apparently in an attempt by Hernán Zin, who is responsible for most of the technical credits, to let the audience consider the children as persons rather than statistics.

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To show a different perspective of the war, we should see the views of what the children have been through. There is no explicit political discourse, probably because politics has no relevance for these kids, and there is no adult narration, the documentary is purely about the devastating incident the children experienced. The director has opted to quiet the adult voices and allow the statements from the children and visuals to speak for themselves. The purpose to inform the inhumanity of someone to harm even the defenseless was a success, though, it would have been better if the Israelis were also included. Their perspective of the war would have also helped in knowing their stand about what happened and it would give us more knowledge about the war. Nevertheless, the work of Hernán Zin brought viewers into a new world through factual information about people, places, and events that exist and the reason for the documentary was sad, but it still provided us with pieces of information that could help people in aiding the oppressed.