21/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: Areeb Zuaiter’s tender documentary about Gaza-born boys indulging in parkour shows hope and joy amidst darkness

There are two sides to every story, aren’t there? In Areeb Zuaiter’s Yalla Parkour [+see also:
trailer
film profile], part of the 75th Berlinale’s Panorama section, and which had its world premiere at DOC NYC, this duality manifests itself in many different ways. Her debut doc – filmed in her home in the USA and in the Gaza Strip in the mid-2010s – is melancholic, yet full of fun and exuberance; it’s tainted with both loss and hope. It makes for an interesting, subtle and poetic watch, and presents a different face of Gaza to the one we know from the news reports ever since the war broke out on 7 October 2023. Yalla Parkour is modest and quiet, much like the voice of its director, which is heard for the better part of the film; it’s also a testament to the human spirit’s ability to continue and find light, even against all odds.

There are two protagonists in the film, which originated in 2015: one is Zuaiter herself, who is Palestinian-born and US-based, and who holds two passports. The other is Ahmed Matar, a young boy living in the Gaza Strip, who, together with his pals, indulges in some impressive parkour on and around buildings, dunes and a demolished airport. He records his feats and posts them online, hoping that this sport will get him out of the closed-off Gaza. It’s a place that Zuaiter – in turn – would like to return to, both physically and metaphorically. They’re two people standing on opposite sides of a computer screen, or of a mirror – like in fairy tales, where two worlds are distant, as if they belonged to different realms. They are gazing at each other with curiosity, and at least for Zuaiter, an immigrant, it’s a tool to define her identity and recapture fleeting moments of her Palestinian memories. She also shares photos of her mother and talks about her family, to understand and convey what it means to live far from your own homeland. She mentions that, at times, her Arabic accent and her sense of belonging have been called into question. In this sense, Yalla Parkour investigates the identity of an immigrant who doesn’t truly belong anywhere.

And what is on the other side of the mirror? The videos made by Matar and his buddies are used in the film, showcasing their crazy acrobatic displays of youthful joy and bravado. Parkour is the very definition of freedom – intoxicating and dangerous at the same time, where the only limits are set by gravity and fear. And simultaneously, climbing a building or doing flips is one of the few activities that offer liberty in Gaza, even if it’s just temporary. Zuaiter purposefully juxtaposes the jumps and joy with the realities of living in the closed-off strip in the mid-2010s – where it’s hard to get a visa, and even harder to cross the border, which was open only a few times a year at the time.

One of the most powerful images we see is that of the boys gleefully getting stuck into their parkour while bombs explode on the horizon, polluting the blue sky with black smoke.

These two perspectives and dreams – Zuiter’s and Matar’s – come together with some effort from the director and the editor, but complement each other in the end. It’s very moving to see that Matar finally made his wish come true and got to do his daring feats in Sweden – and at the Berlinale, too, as he was attending a screening of Yalla Parkour. It’s also devastating to see what is left of the Gaza Strip, and to realise that that joy and hope are even harder to come by now.

Yalla Parkour was produced by Sweden, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Palestine. Malmö-based Kinana Films is the production outfit behind it, while ArtHood Entertainment is responsible for its world sales.