When I began writing this reflection on the Grimstad International Short Film Festival, Modern Times Review suggested I focus on the films presented under the theme «Human Dignity and Survival in Times of Conflict.» I was immediately drawn to the idea—not only because conflict, war, and humanitarian issues have shaped many of my interests as a journalist and documentary filmmaker, but also because they have profoundly shaped my personal life.

As someone who grew up affected by war and displacement, I often return to questions of memory, survival, dignity, and what remains after violence. For me, films are more than stories unfolding on a screen. They are catalysts for memory. A sound, a landscape, a face, or a seemingly insignificant object can suddenly awaken experiences that have remained buried for years.

I have increasingly come to believe that our bodies remember what our minds try to leave behind. Painful experiences do not simply disappear with time. They remain stored somewhere within us, waiting to be triggered by an image, a sound, or a story.

During the festival, I was reminded of this while watching an animated film (I amn’t sure by Luisa Zürcher) about a filmmaker’s hospital stay. Unexpectedly, I felt a wave of nausea, becoming tense without fully understanding why. Then, in the darkness of the screening room, I noticed a woman attempting to leave before the film ended. Moments later, she collapsed near the stairs. When the screen’s light briefly illuminated the audience, I could see several people helping her. For a moment, the reality inside the cinema seemed to merge with the one on screen. What stayed with me was not only the incident itself but the realisation that everyone in the room was watching a different film. We may sit side by side, looking at the same screen, yet each of us brings our own experiences into the cinema. Perhaps that is one of cinema’s greatest powers. Rather than approaching the films in the programme as works to be reviewed, I found myself responding to them through personal reflection. What remained with me after the screenings was three images: a seashell, a festival bride, and a handful of tears.

Free Fish

Free Fish follows two brothers in Gaza, separated by war and displacement yet connected by the sea. What I saw was not only their separation but the ingenuity required to survive. I watched fishermen repair torn nets by hand, rebuild what had been damaged, and continue working despite constant danger. What struck me most was not their suffering but their creativity. Watching them, I kept asking myself: if these same people did not have to devote so much of their intelligence and energy to survival, what else might they create? What inventions, businesses, artworks, or ideas could emerge if their lives were not defined by conflict? The film reminded me that war destroys not only lives but also possibilities. It redirects human potential away from creation and toward survival.

One image, a handful of seashells and small fish brought back from the sea after a dangerous journey, immediately transported me back to my childhood near the Iranian border after my family had been displaced by war. As children, we would hold seashells to our ears and imagine we could hear distant oceans. In Gaza, the same object carried a different meaning. It was bound to hope for a family’s survival, for food on the table. The seashell became a reminder that objects carry different meanings depending on the lives surrounding them.

The Donkey of October 7th

If Free Fish left me with the image of a seashell, The Donkey of October 7th left me with that of a festival bride. At first glance, the film seems almost absurd. In a devastated neighbourhood in Gaza, donkeys are celebrated in a ceremonial procession and treated like honoured guests. Yet the longer I watched, the more moving the film became.

In the rural village of Arazbari, in Azerbaijan, where I grew up, donkeys were part of everyday life. They were not simply working animals. They shared people’s hardships, carried burdens, and accompanied families through difficult times. In many ways, they were companions in survival. Because of this, I immediately connected with the film’s portrayal of them. What moved me most was not the donkeys themselves but what they represented. In the middle of destruction, people still found reasons to celebrate, imagine, and create rituals. One image in particular stayed by my side: a young girl affectionately referring to a donkey dressed for the procession as a «festival bride». The moment was both playful and moving. Even in a landscape shaped by loss, people continued to create moments of beauty and meaning.

The film also reminded me that war affects far more than human beings. Animals become silent witnesses to violence, displacement, and loss. Some of the most heartbreaking moments were not those involving people but those involving the donkeys themselves. I watched a donkey grieve the loss of its companion, another struggle through hunger and exhaustion, and owners treating them with a tenderness that revealed how deeply intertwined their lives had become. In one scene, a woman recited verses from the «Kuran» over her donkey, a gesture that felt both intimate and symbolic. It suggested care, protection, and an acknowledgement that suffering was not limited to humans alone.

War destroys not only lives but also possibilities. It redirects human potential away from creation and toward survival.

Through the eyes of these donkeys, I imagined a different perspective on conflict—one that witnesses human suffering without understanding the political forces behind it. I did not expect to feel such sorrow for an animal. Perhaps not since watching Au Hasard Balthazar by Robert Bresson have I been so affected by the main character donkey’s pain and vulnerability.

I was particularly affected by learning about the female artist who documented the donkeys and was later killed in a bombardment. Her story reminded me of how many artists, writers, photographers, and dreamers disappear in conflicts around the world. We count casualties, but we rarely count the unfinished paintings, unwritten books, unrealised films, and futures that vanish with them.

The Recce

The third film, The Recce, affected me in a different but equally personal way. While the film explores the relationship between cinema, colonial history, and state-building in Uganda, what was most fascinating was its relationship to place and memory. I have always felt that landscapes are memorable. Every tree, every stone, every abandoned building seems to carry traces of the people who once lived there. Places are not empty. They absorb stories. Watching the film, I found myself thinking about villages destroyed or abandoned by war. I thought about homes left behind, collapsed walls, and courtyards where children once played. I thought about a pomegranate tree that stood near my childhood home. Perhaps it is still there. Perhaps it has dried out. Perhaps it has disappeared completely.

Sometimes I imagine returning to those places. I wonder what the walls would tell me. What memories remain hidden inside old photographs, broken furniture, or forgotten objects? For me, memory does not exist only within people. It also survives in landscapes, buildings, and everyday things.

This is why The Recce resonated so deeply. It shows that conflicts are not only carried by people. Places carry them too. The film is about the location test in Uganda that explores the relationship between cinema, colonial history, and state-building. The traces of violence remain embedded in landscapes long after the events themselves have passed. There is almost no dialogue. The film is based on the emails and archival materials of London-based filmmaker, researcher, and writer Daniel Mann, a location test filmed in Uganda, which explores how cinema’s colonial imagination binds the fiction of film to the fiction of nation-building. Through the story of a forgotten colonial plan to establish a Jewish homeland in Uganda, the film reveals how landscapes can be imagined, claimed, and transformed through both political power and cinema.

If Free Fish gave me a seashell and The Donkey of October 7th a festival bride, The Recce left me with a handful of tears from history—for places that no longer exist as they once did, and for the lives embedded within them. Although these three films are very different, a common thread connects them. None focus primarily on military events or political leaders. Instead, they focus on people, relationships, rituals, memories, and everyday acts of endurance. Together, they ask what it means to remain human in circumstances that constantly threaten humanity. For me, this is the essence of human dignity. It is not heroism. It is not a victory. It is the decision to continue caring, creating, remembering, working, imagining, and hoping despite everything.

Conflict may destroy homes, nature, and lives, but it cannot erase memory or the instinct to survive. On the bus home after the festival, I kept asking myself what would stay with me most. It wasn’t the statistics, the headlines, or the political debates. It was the images: interrupted childhoods, unfinished dreams, abandoned homes, and landscapes that no longer belonged to the people who once called them home.