Yalla Parkour (DOC NYC)

The largest documentary film festival in the United States, DOC NYC, once again screened a diverse array of untold stories from around the world this year. Themes of stolen youth and yearning for paradise lost unified several of the documentaries I watched.

The winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the international competition, Yalla Parkour, follows Ahmed, a young man from Gaza, as he creates parkour videos with his friends amid the ruins of the southern Gaza Strip. Ahmed began making these videos in 2015, which caught the attention of director Areeb Zuaiter, who discovered them and began a correspondence with him. Although she followed Ahmed’s journey virtually from her home in the United States, Zuaiter bore witness to significant moments in his life. Through Ahmed, Zuaiter deepens her connection to her homeland, Palestine.

Zuaiter recalls her first visit to Gaza with her family for a wedding. Part of the film serves as a letter to her deceased mother, who left the West Bank for Jordan. The filmmaker beautifully evokes a sense of memory, overlaying her narration about her family’s life with Ahmed’s videos. The documentary shows Ahmed’s parkour practice alongside pivotal moments, such as his application for a visa to Sweden and his friend Jinji’s recovery after a fall while parkouring. Ahmed’s connection with Zuaiter deepens as he dreams of leaving Gaza and joining the diaspora, while Zuaiter begins to form her Palestinian identity through their relationship.

The film’s emotional core is encapsulated in a scene where Ahmed performs parkour through the ruins of Gaza’s only airport, accompanied by the voice of Zuaiter’s young daughter singing in the background. Her daughter’s voice symbolizes the future, restoring a glimmer of hope for Ahmed and Gaza. Zuaiter has crafted a complex and intimate film that explores conflict and displacement through the everyday lives of Palestinian youth.

Vrej in My Sweet Land (DOC NYC)

My Sweet Land also explores conflict by following 11-year-old Vrej, a boy from the Armenian region of Artsakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh. The film begins with a cultural and geographic overview of the territory before focusing on Vrej, who dreams of becoming a dentist. In his village, Vrej tends animals, plays with his family, and enjoys his childhood. In one classroom scene, a teacher poses a question about the changing borders on maps. When no one provides the correct answer, she states, “Unresolved territorial issues.” This phrase takes on greater meaning when Vrej and his family are forced to evacuate due to the 2020 war with Azerbaijan.

In the Armenian capital of Yerevan, Vrej confronts the impact of the conflict on his life. Director Sareen Hairabedian highlights how even children are politicized in times of war. Vrej frequently hears statements like, “You are all soldiers by living here.” Adults continuously ask children what homeland means to them, while the kids are taught how to hold a gun and avoid mines and are exposed to videos glorifying soldiers. 

The film’s visual tone shifts as it moves from Vrej’s idyllic village, depicted with imagery reminiscent of Sergei Parajanov’s use of landscape and mythology, to the harsher realities of displacement in Yerevan. There, Vrej lights a candle in a dim room for the souls lost in the war, surrounded by icons. For him, the flame symbolizes resilience despite his displacement.

Farahnaz Sharifi in My Stolen Planet (DOC NYC)

My Stolen Planet resists the collective forgetting enforced in Iran after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Director Farahnaz Sharifi weaves personal footage and photographs she has collected over her life into what she calls a “homemade history.” Born just weeks after the revolution, Sharifi includes early footage of women’s protests against repressive laws from the year of her birth.

The film juxtaposes images of Sharifi as a child—unhappy in a hijab—with a later photo where she smiles, holding the discarded garment (see above). These personal moments are interspersed with imagery of pre-revolution Iran, much of which the government has sought to erase. After families fled Iran, their photos and videos were confiscated and destroyed. Sharifi managed to salvage some of these records, preserving memories of lives no longer in Iran. The film highlights the theft of memory as a tool of authoritarian control.

In countless protests, which are prohibited by the government with harsh consequences, women take off their hijabs, burn them, or simply wave them. For Sharifi, the hijab represents more than clothing: It is a symbol of systemic interference in women’s lives. Despite oppression, Sharifi and other women find solace in daily routines. They sing John Lennon’s “Imagine,” celebrate birthdays, and hold onto joy amid adversity. After leaving for Germany for an artist residency, unaware she could never return, Sharifi reflects on five decades of oppression and her place “somewhere between the past and the future.” Over an image of her seven-year-old self, smiling and free, the weight of memory is palpable.

All three films are deeply personal portraits of places where politics and conflict have made life extraordinarily challenging. Yet they are united by themes of perseverance and resilience. Through honest portrayals of daily life under duress, they offer poetic and defiant testaments to memory that refuses to be erased.