The feature-length documentary, A State of Passion (2024), co-directed by Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi, takes us deeper into the unfolding war on Gaza through the eyes of Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah. For almost two years, the extraordinary violence in Gaza has been broadcast live on our screens, even as those who strive to document it are being assassinated right in front of our eyes. 

Yet, the witnessing, documenting, archiving, and narrating of the genocide of Palestinians continues, more and more from unlikely sources. Some of the most rigorous accounts of what is happening on the ground are coming from doctors and healthcare workers, many of whom have paid a harrowing price for speaking out. 

Documentary filmmakers Carol and Muna found themselves wrought with distress as they watched the bombardment of Gaza in October 2023, and realized that it was unprecedented in its volume and genocidal goal. When they heard their old friend Dr. Abu-Sittah was getting on a plane to Gaza, they asked if they could start documenting his trip through images, WhatsApp texts, and voice messages. They asked him to stay in touch in whatever way he could.

Trained as a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, Dr. Abu-Sittah has been moonlighting as a trauma surgeon for several years, and has made trips to Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan, and Iraq, and his native Palestine over the last two decades. But his sixth trip to Gaza was different. 

Dr. Abu-Sittah convened a macabre press briefing after Israel bombed Al-Ahli Baptist hospital in October last year. Dr. Abu-Sittah stood at a podium amidst a pile of dead bodies, distressed colleagues staring blankly, a man seated by the podium holding a dead baby, clearly shell-shocked. 

The scene shook the world. The hospital bombardments and the media’s gaslighting narratives altered something in Dr. Abu Sittah himself. He began the work of witnessing and narrating in earnest, sending urgent missives about what was happening on the ground through social media. 

Eventually, he decided that his medical expertise was not as helpful with the hospital infrastructure destroyed and no medical supplies being allowed in. After 43 days, he returned to London and decided it was time to pick up the microphone and take a public stance about what he witnessed. “I cannot unsee what I saw,” he told Carol and Muna. 

A State of Passion, however, is not the story of one man but the story of Gaza, the filmmakers insist. We get loving glimpses into the doctor’s family, his eloquent and fiercely revolutionary wife Deema, who is from Gaza, and his two young boys, who are proud of their father and of being Palestinian. Deema, in particular, speaks about her childhood and youth in Gaza and her desire for their two boys to also become intimate with their heritage. 

The documentary weaves footage of Abu-Sittah’s trip to Gaza in September 2023. These sweet family videos now seem bittersweet and wrenching since Deema’s family home is destroyed and she is agonized about her aging father, who remains adamant about not leaving Gaza even as the bombardment escalates. 

In the Radical Futures interview, the filmmakers speak about how the documentary evolved, the tough decisions about structures, timelines, and tone, as well as the deteriorating situation in Gaza, where the healthcare community and hospital infrastructure are being deliberately targeted. 

Its title, A State of Passion, comes from a poem by Muzaffar al-Nawab, composed after the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon in 1982. M. Lynx Qualey of ArabLit agreed to translate the following excerpt from the poem:

At night, sneak in.
There is an occupying soldier:
Strangle him with this sock.
Perhaps you will heal one thousandth of the hatred in your heart.
This sock is a knife.
A martyr’s shoe is a knife.
His shaving brush is a knife.
A state of passion (حالة عشق) that will never come again, O servant of God, O Palestine.

Indeed, everyone from the Abu-Sittah family to the filmmakers themselves speaks about a heightened state of passion—for Palestine, for justice, for freedom. Since the release, the duo has been traveling everywhere to screen the film and speak about the continuing genocide in Palestine. 

They hope that their documentary can become a tool to raise awareness about what is going on in Gaza and educate viewers about the long history of occupation and violence in Palestine. 

Arrange a screening at your institution here. Donate to the Ghassan Abu-Sittah Children’s Fund here.