All That’s Left of You received a standing ovation at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

For her third movie as a writer and director, Cherien Dabis chose a story spanning three generations. All That’s Left of You (اللي باقي منك)  focuses on one Palestinian family experience from 1948 to 2022. Epic in scope, the film shows the effects of trauma as it is carried through the family and deepened by continuous Israeli occupation and abuses.

The film begins with a Palestinian teen confronting Israeli soldiers at a West Bank protest. His mother (played by Cherien Dabis herself) recounts the series of events that led him to that fateful moment, starting with his grandfather’s forced displacement.

Also starring in the film are Saleh Bakri, Adam Bakri, Maria Zreik, Mohammad Bakri, and Muhammad Abed Elrahman.

 

After the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, Cherien Dabis said: “I wanted to make a movie that would honor my father and Palestinians like my father, who became refugees and who lived this experience by telling the story of how Palestinians became refugees. And telling the Palestinian origin story because it’s virtually missing from the mainstream narrative.” Read more here.

The film is heartbreakingly timely. Filming was interrupted and had to be re arranged and postponed for months, as the crew was forced to leave Palestine after October 7th. Cherien Dabis shared the story behind the making of the film, concluding by saying: “In a world where narratives shape our reality and mainstream media dehumanizes and vilifies us, filmmaking is more than an art form, it’s a matter of survival. It’s a preservation of history. A resistance to erasure.”

Cherien Dabis chaired the 2024 Arab Film Festival’s jury. She made history when her debut feature film Amreeka broke records in its theatrical release by becoming the most-screened Arab-directed film in US-cinema history. Her second feature film, May in the Summer, screened at AFF2014.

Cherien Dabis is a critically acclaimed Palestinian American filmmaker and Emmy nominated television director. She is best known for her critically acclaimed independent feature films Amreeka (2009) and May in the Summer (2013), which premiered at the Sundance, Cannes and Venice film festivals and won dozens of international awards. Amreeka was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Picture. Dabis is highly sought after in television for her standout episodic directing work on Emmy and Golden Globe-winning shows like Only Murders in the Building (Hulu), Ramy (Hulu) and Ozark (Netflix).