By Huda Al-Shair

JEDDAH — For more than two years, the world has been confronted with images emerging from the genocide in Gaza among the most harrowing of them, families trapped beneath the rubble of buildings struck by Israeli missiles.

It is an experience difficult to fully imagine. In her short film Al-Mashhad (“The Scene”), Saudi director Lana Komsany attempts to bring viewers as close as possible to that reality.

Running just 13 minutes, Al-Mashhad follows a family in Gaza trapped under the ruins of their destroyed home.

Over the course of 36 hours, the film traces their final moments as the sounds of war rage above them and a baby’s cries echo through the confined space, while family members are gradually killed one by one.

Komsany said the inspiration for the film came from two deeply personal sources.

“Like any human, what we see every day on the news is absolutely horrible especially now with the recent genocide. But this hasn’t just been recent; it’s been our whole lives. I’m 46, and that’s all I remember,” she said.

As a mother of three, the images she encountered online affected her profoundly.

The second source of inspiration came from her professional background. Komsany, an acting coach with more than 15 years of experience, regularly runs workshops focused on theater and cinema techniques.

During one session, she asked participants to imagine being trapped under rubble, removing dialogue and body language to explore alternative forms of expression.

From a group of 25 workshop participants, she selected five actors — Yosef Jazzar, Dina Alwany, Dina Abdulmajeed, Kawthar Alshair, and Nersyan — to appear in the film.

To immerse the actors in the psychological reality of being buried alive, Komsany placed them inside enclosed boxes during filming.

“It was more of a mandate — a required state of mind that the actor has to put themselves in,” she explained.

“That state is a combination of many things. One of them, which also functions as a representational tool, is the costume and the setting around us.”

With a background in theater, Komsany drew heavily on her training in stagecraft to design the film’s claustrophobic environment.

“I studied theater at university, and one of the things we studied intensively for a year was stagecraft,” she said.

“I know how to craft a stage in a way that serves the setting. With years of practice, I also knew very clearly what I did not want. I had many references from films that explored similar territory, and I deliberately avoided making it look like those.”

Her attention to detail extended to the recreation of the rubble itself. While some rocks were real, many of the elements were improvised using unconventional materials.

“I had access to boulders in Korea,” she said. “I took fabric, dipped it in wet cement, let it dry into shape, then sprayed it with dry cement to give it a realistic texture.”

One of the most striking aspects of Al-Mashhad is its depiction of injuries sustained by the trapped family. Yet Komsany insisted the graphic content was restrained compared to the reality people witness daily on their phones.

“As graphic as I could get, it was still nothing compared to what is actually happening,” she said.

“We’ve seen decapitations, parents carrying children in plastic bags, body parts. I was kind. I didn’t show anything at all.”

She added that public reactions to such images often troubled her. “People tell me, ‘Why are you bothering yourself with this? Don’t look at it. It’s triggering.’ That, in itself, is triggering to me. We live in privilege how can we not react after all this?”

Described by its director as a humanitarian film, Al-Mashhad was created with memory and documentation in mind.

“It’s for future generations to remember and to see what happened,” Komsany said. “It’s a documentation — a trusted delivery of the voices of souls that are screaming back there.”

The film marks Komsany’s second work centered on Palestine.