Yalla Parkour
(Sweden/Qatar/Saudi Arabia/Palestine, 87 min.)
Dir. Areeb Zuaiter
Section: International Competition (World premiere)
As Palestine continues to be physically and emotionally devastated by war – now more than ever in the aftermath of October 7, 2023 – cinema has responded by capturing the country’s stories with palpable urgency. Films such as From Ground Zero and No Other Land explore the ongoing consequences of settler violence through upfront access to the atrocities and displacement being performed within the West Bank. However, as necessary as those documentaries are, there are many other angles through which filmmakers can explore the stories of Palestine and its people. For example, audiences may not know that the Gaza Strip has a parkour team, nor that the unconventional sport – in which competitors traverse distances through acrobatics– has provided a way for Palestinian athletes to be invited to compete in other countries. These competitions allow them to surpass Israel’s strict border policy and effectively escape death.
The story of free-running troupe PK Gaza (or Gaza Parkour) has been told before, such as in the 2011 Al Jazeera short Free Running Gaza and in a 2017 Red Bull TV campaign. However, it has never quite in the way that Washington D.C.-based Palestinian filmmaker Areeb Zuaiter explores it in her directorial debut, Yalla Parkour. The film is less about the team specifically and more about Zuaiter’s friendship with one of its members, Ahmed Matar, whom she connects with after seeing one of his parkour videos online in 2015. As Matar shares more videos with Zuaiter, the team’s lighthearted camaraderie against the backdrop of their home country’s conflict inspires her to reconsider her own connection to Palestine as well as her relationship with her late mother, who was also Palestinian. Part memoir, part sports film, and part social doc, Yalla Parkour employs multiple tonal and thematic techniques to wrestle with connection to one’s heritage. The results are tender but ultimately uneven and, unfortunately, unmemorable, stripping a novel approach to Palestinian resilience of urgency and impact.
The film is framed as a narrated letter from Zuaiter to her mother, beginning as she looks at old photos and recalls the power of her mother’s smile. For the director, it is a powerful image of hope that she clings to as she watches Palestine being destroyed in the Israel-Hamas War. She recalls her first meeting with Matar and feeling a sense of belonging through their conversations, something she struggled with during her childhood as a mixed-race Palestinian-Jordanian. Zuaiter recalls how other Palestinian kids made fun of her unusual accent, which results in her feeling detached from the country and the violence it endures as she grows older. This creates distance between her and her mother, who felt deeply affected by her home country’s destruction in ways the filmmaker only now fully understands.
Although Yalla Parkour displays an admirably personal approach to the material, it feels too loose to resonate. Zuaiter’s mother doesn’t feel significantly characterized, in part due to a lack of material, nor is the detailing of the filmmaker’s own background thorough enough for viewers to grasp her connection to Matar. It doesn’t help that the visual language that represents Zuaiter’s personal development is overly abstract and staged for the camera. Some motifs include Zuaiter’s face obscured by reflections or projections, as well as wintry landscape shots captured through the windows of her dark, empty household. It’s a gloomy collection of visual motifs that intentionally juxtapose her isolation to Matar’s parkour, shown through sandy vérité archival footage; however, the contrast also makes it apparent how much more naturally compelling the latter is over the former.
The film gains momentum when it shifts focus to Matar and his parkour videos, which feature impressive stunts for a still-burgeoning parkour group. “Our videos are the only way for the world to see us,” he says, hopeful his videos will earn him an invitation to compete abroad as it has for other teammates. The trick jumps they perform aren’t all pretty – some, in fact, leave them injured and are quite difficult to watch – but whatever harm they experience through their parkour can’t be worse than the risks they experience daily merely by living in Palestine. The suspense in these videos make for a unique subtextual alchemy, one that channels the heart-pounding uncertainty of acrobatic sports into the experience of living amidst war and destruction. This is where Yalla Parkour shines brightest.
As the film transitions into its second act set in 2016, Zuaiter inexplicably incorporates vérité of Matar and his home life in Palestine, seemingly captured by a B-filmmaking team, as he attempts to secure a visa for an international competition. This ostensibly remote direction immediately feels non-diegetic and doesn’t make for a cohesive viewing experience. This especially feels clear as Matar’s narrative shifts towards his struggles getting the visa approval due to an archaic and biased immigration system. Although it’s undeniably an important moment in Matar’s story to include, it simply cannot compete with Zuaiter’s previous focus on parkour. When amateur GoPro footage resonates harder than professionally captured vérité, something has gotten lost in the sauce.
When the film makes its third time skip, this time from 2016 all the way to 2024, it’s clear that Zuaiter’s vision isn’t being fully realized. There’s a lack of detail in the places that matter most and the rumination that seeks to connect everything together isn’t compellingly conveyed. There is the potential for a powerful story here, especially when Zuaiter’s tale brushes against Matar’s friends and other PK Gaza athletes. The most notable is Jinji, who is seriously injured after falling from a tall building and breaking as many as 50 bones in his body. Jinji’s return from the hospital is a celebration in the streets, complete with firecrackers, food, and celebratory selfies. It’s another example of the inspiring joy that fuels the story, yet it is one of the few moments that Zuaiter’s story reaches for something bigger beyond her tale or Matar’s story. Parkour, like filmmaking, is a team sport, and Zuaiter ought to have used this to her advantage more frequently.
