‘Yalla Parkour’ turns a fad into a cry for Palestinian freedom
The DOC NYC premiere is part sports saga and part filmmaker self-portrait
Filmmaker Areeb Zuaiter uses footage of the group Gaza Parkour to showcase life in Palestine.
Ruben Hamelink
Words by Siddhant Adlakha
A time capsule of Gaza leading up to October 2023, Yalla Parkour is filmmaker Areeb Zuaiter's attempt to reconnect with her Palestinian roots through a highly unexpected source: DIY parkour videos emanating from the strip. The sport, which entails getting from point A to B in the most efficient—and most acrobatic—manner, went quickly from popular fad to punchline in the late 2000s, but Zuaiter's lens, and the passion of her young male subjects, practically transform it into an embodiment of joy and liberation.
Zuaiter is one of the movie's subjects too, just as the amateur Palestinian cameramen filming jumps and flips for YouTube are practically its co-directors, in what turns out to be an introspective portrait of cultural and personal longing. The story is framed from a modern vantage, with Zuaiter filming herself in the corner of the screen as she watches the destruction in Gaza unfold in 2024. However, the project's roots go back to at least 2015, when she first discovered the group Gaza Parkour and began communicating with one of its members, Ahmed Matar, from her home in Washington D.C.
As this long-distance friendship blossoms—the film is practically a video epistolary, with footage shared back-and-forth—Zuaiter's melancholic voiceover also addresses her late mother, whose death severed her connection to Palestine. Her family left the West Bank when she was a child, and her yearning to return is mirrored by her memories of her mother's smile, which faded over the years, as she grew more distant from her homeland. It's in Matar's parkour videos that Zuaiter finds hints of this smile again, a connection she first portrays through a heartrending setup: closeups of the joyful parkour team as seen on her laptop, with her own close-up mirrored in its screen, as she attempts to smile just as widely.
But these parkour videos also tell a wider story, between teens and 20 somethings turning falling bombs in the distance into cool backgrounds for their stunts, and the abandoned locations of their training sessions. Some of these take place at a dilapidated building they refer to as the "bombed mall." The film's structure—in which 2024 is a narrative anchor for 2015, which itself harbors stories of the past—allows Yalla Parkour to not only capture memories, but memories of memories. It's a film of refractions and great uncertainty, notions further embodied by the way Zuaiter films herself: as an observer in the shadows, out of focus and incomplete, until she can find a more stable sense of self (and of her history) through her video calls with Ahmed.
And yet, the makeshift crew celebrates successes and failures in equal measure, cheering on not just jumps and flips between structures, but their friends returning home from the hospital. Their jubilation feels defiant.
Zuaiter, by her own admission, has little interest in Parkour itself, but it becomes a fascinating window into life in modern Gaza. When international Parkour competitions come calling, Ahmed and his friends are forced to jump through bureaucratic hoops for visas, though they have little chance of being allowed to leave, or to start new lives. And when they climb enormous structures for the thrill of it (and for their YouTube channel), the rising tension becomes a surprising embodiment of life under occupation, wherein pain and bodily harm are always lurking around the corner. And yet, the makeshift crew celebrates successes and failures in equal measure, cheering on not just jumps and flips between structures, but their friends returning home from the hospital. Their jubilation feels defiant.
Members of Gaza Parkour enjoying a moment at the beach.
Still frame from "Yalla Parkour"
As the film moves forward in time (all the way to the summer of 2023), and its subjects' lives and circumstances evolve, their fleeting joys are bookended by the inevitability of what's to come. In fact, the film's closing credits begin with memorials for several members of Gaza Parkour who have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since last October. It is, of course, impossible for Zuaiter (or for any of us) to discuss modern Palestine, and the way its people can be separated from their lands and their cultures, without the looming shadow of the ongoing genocide. However, in simply re-framing a hobby as both a ticket to a new life and a means of physical expression, Yalla Parkour elevates even the mundane, the juvenile, and the outdated by capturing the sheer passion with which Gaza Parkour operates. As they soar between ledges, somersault, and leap off every wall, there are moments where you swear they could fly.
Published on November 22, 2024
Words by Siddhant Adlakha
Siddhant Adlakha is a critic and filmmaker from Mumbai, though he now lives in New York City. They're more similar than you'd think. Find him at @SiddhantAdlakha on Twitter