Palestine Returned: The Struggle of the right of return for Palestinian youth to their families ancestral homelands

The project worked with 30 young Palestinians in Gaza, many of them students, who took part in the Great Return March in 2018-19 and documents their struggle to return to their ancestral homeland. Palestine Returned was created as part of the Creative Interruptions Project where researchers from five universities and several non-university-based collaborators came together to explore the role of the arts and creativity within diverse communities. The three-year (2016-19) Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded research project focused on how marginalised communities use the arts, media and creativity to challenge exclusion. The project produced outputs including academic articles and publications, films and digital installations.

Palestine Returned is an i-doc, a digital platform that allows the audience to create their own narrative from the on-line content provided by the film-makers. Fero says “This is a challenging piece of work, both in terms of its form and content, there is no doubt that this form of media practice produces high engagement in an audience. It is a platform that allows collaboration between creative filmmakers and participants and questions the power relations that film producers have with their audiences”.

The project was filmed in Gaza through the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) that works to protect the rights and improve the lives of children in the Middle East through aid, empowerment and education. In the Middle East, MECA provides humanitarian aid, partners with community organizations to run projects for children, and supports income-generation projects. In the US and internationally, MECA raises awareness about the lives of children in the region and encourages meaningful action.