Hamdi And Maria

This is an affecting documentary short, screening with To See If I'm Smiling at the Edinburgh Film Festival 2008.

Hamdi is a young construction worker from Gaza, who lost almost all of his family in an Israeli missile strike. The only other survivor was his daughter Maria, a joyful girl crippled by the explosion.

We see the pair of them in the Israeli hospital where Maria is being cared for. Hamdi sleeps by her side, tends to her day and night while machines breathe for her.

This is a heart-rending story, the sad product of a sad history. Director Timor Britva has done his best to tell this story with documentary impartiality, but the situation makes that almost impossible. Collateral damage is an empty term, but this film gives it a face, a laugh, a smile.