This Is My Picture When I Was Dead (2010)

Directed by: Mahmoud al-Massad | 90 minutes | documentary

Bashir Meraish is a political cartoonist in Jordan. But the 30-year-old Palestinian is more than that. His improbable life story prompted the Dutch-based filmmaker Mahmoud al Massad to re-examine the complex Palestinian issue. Much has already been said and written about the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, so it is a real task to come up with a surprise. Yet, Al Massad succeeds in seeing the situation through the eyes of Bashir, son of the influential PLO leader Mamoun Meraish – the mastermind behind numerous attacks on Israeli targets – who was assassinated in 1983 by the Israeli secret service. The then four-year-old Bashir, who was in the car with his father, was also hit by the flying bullets. Initially, it was therefore thought that he had not survived the attack. However, the boy was still alive in the hospital. His father’s love, Al Massad describes, has kept him alive.

Twenty-six years later, Bashir, like his father, is politically involved. From Jordan, he casts a critical eye on what is happening around him with his political cartoons. Al Massad takes him by the hand and delves into his past, especially his father’s. Who was his father anyway, what did he do and what were his motives? Conversations with his mother, his father’s old comrades-in-arms and others who have seen him closely teach him a lot about the man he never really knew. Like Bashir himself, his father was an idealist at heart, dreaming of a Palestinian state of his own. A dream that in the current situation seems further away than ever. His father may have died ‘for a good cause’, but it hasn’t gotten much further. During the conversations it becomes clear what happened that particular August day in 1983 and what role that event played in Bashir’s life. It’s interesting to see how he too learns new things about his father by talking about him with people close to him. Shocking: of his then warmates, only one is still alive.

The fact that Al Massad has a fairly open mind and does not take a position is one of the points that make this film strong. Israel is not necessarily the bogeyman, the Palestinians are not just the good guys. The finger is never pointed. Instead, it’s about deep and honest personal motives that people may have to commit themselves to something. In order to achieve a higher goal. Mamoun did it his way, Bashir chooses a different path but is no less purposeful. This becomes clear when we see him at work as a political cartoonist. For the Palestinians it is vital to be recognized and they fight for their right to exist. Sometimes until death follows. And blame them. That is a message that actually only gets through to you after some time, a few hours after you have seen this documentary. Because ‘This Is My Picture When I Was Dead’ (2010) is such a film that initially seems to slide past you – perhaps because of the sober set-up and the slow pace at which the conversations pass you, which makes it difficult to immediately surrender to the film – but only enter after it has been able to act on you for a while.