Give Me the Backstory: Get to Know Cherien Dabis, the Filmmaker Behind All That's Left of You ( )

By Bailey Pennick

One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival is having a front-row seat for the bright future of independent filmmaking. While we can learn a lot about the filmmakers from the 2025 Sundance Film Festival through the art that these storytellers share with us, there's always more we can learn about them as people. We decided to get to the bottom of those artistic wells with our ongoing series: Give Me the Backstory!

Cherien Dabis' advice for filmmakers isn't only essential for those looking to improve their craft, it should be a universal mindset for all. Have a plan, but be ready to throw it out and improvise if your intuition tells you that it's not working, she says. Even if you're many takes into a shot. Magic can happen when we're willing to trust our instincts, embrace uncertainty, and be spontaneous in the moment.

The multi-Sundance Festival alum followed her own mantra and embraced the pivot in more ways than one when making All That's Left of You ( ). The film, which finds Dabis in front of the camera as well as behind in the writer-director role, thoughtfully follows the personal history of a Palestinian family through three generations of grief, love, trauma, and endurance. In working with her cast, Dabis adapted dialogue and scenes to feel more true to the moment, bringing the sense of love and ownership to the full team for the project. Her whole production also took on the be ready to throw it out mindset when they had to evacuate Palestine on October 7, 2023, right before the beginning of the shoot.

My creative team and I became family during the making of this film, she recalls. Some of us spent nearly 17 months working together. We traveled from country to country - Palestine to Cyprus to Jordan then Greece. The movie became a container for our outrage, grief and compassion. It was a gift to be able to create during a time of such unbelievable destruction.

All That's Left of You ( ) debuts in the Premieres section at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Below read more about Dabis' journey to filmmaking, her history with Sundance Institute, and why this story needs to be told now.

LINK:	https://www.sundance.org/blogs/give-me-the-backstory-get-to-know-cheri...
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