GAZA: Short film takes on rape, a taboo subject in Palestinian enclave

Basma Abualila, a journalist and filmmaker living in Gaza, recently caused a stir in the strip with her short film on rape in Gaza. In her 10-minute film, “ A Call at Night," based on a real-life incident, a young woman shares her story of how she was raped by her boyfriend and then forced to marry her rapist out of fear when she got pregnant. 

 
 

 

“He said he needed to talk to me but said we couldn’t talk while standing in the street because everyone was watching us. So he asked me to get into his car to talk. I get into the car and he puts something over my face,” the woman tells Abualila in a telephone conversation in the film. 

What then happens is unclear. The woman remembers nothing after getting into the car with the man. She wakes up hours later in an apartment with her clothes torn off and a terrible headache. Her boyfriend is in the room, looking at her from a distance. She believes she has been drugged.