Sightlines · reception

How All That's Left of You was received

2025 · Cherien Dabis · All That's Left of You on Sightlines

The arc

Premiered at Sundance 2025 as a moving family epic, then snowballed through the year — audience awards from Sydney to Leiden, Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem signing on as executive producers, and a spot on the Oscar shortlist as Jordan's international-feature entry.

What’s debated

The conversation around it is less about the film than about the industry: how did a film this acclaimed have to fight so hard for distribution, and is Hollywood finally ready for a Palestinian epic?

Its footprint

It became the standard-bearer for Palestinian cinema in the 2025-26 awards season — the film cited whenever the conversation turns to whether Palestinian stories can get the sweeping, classic-Hollywood treatment. The death of co-star Mohammad Bakri in early 2026 gave it added weight as one of the great Palestinian actor's final screen roles.

Where it stands

Too young for cult status but already treated as an instant landmark — the intergenerational Palestinian epic cinephiles kept saying didn't exist until Dabis made it.

Did you know? Dabis spent five months prepping the shoot in Palestine and was two weeks from rolling cameras when the October 2023 war forced the production to evacuate — the entire film was rebuilt and shot in Jordan, Cyprus, and Greece, which is why it competed at the Oscars as Jordan's entry.

Named by the director

• So Long, My Son (2019) — Dabis said Wang Xiaoshuai's decades-spanning family drama was the rare intergenerational film that moved her while writing — the kind of movie she'd been searching for as a reference.