In her debut at Curtas, Zaina Bseiso presents a documentary about the multigenerational experience of Palestine in exile. In Los Angeles, wishing to film the city’s last orange grove, in conversation with her father, they establish a symbolic parallel with the fateful end of the historical Jaffa orange groves and their famous fruits, later appropriated by Israel as a token of national propaganda, and progressively dismantled since the implementation of Israeli settlements in the territory. Bseiso struggles with her father’s opinion when he protests her film’s documentary intentions. In fact, he emphasizes the importance of fictionalization regarding the fate of this orange grove, no matter how certain its expropriation. For Bseiso’s father, it is imperative to contradict the present, for, looking at Jaffa, from reality nothing stands out other than decades of subjugation to a colonial regime. More than accepting it, it is necessary to live in the illusion of a new present, in the dream of a reality to come. The power of fiction thus emerges in the collective memory and imagination of the Palestinian people: as a weapon of awareness of their right to self-determination, as an act of resistance on behalf of a reality long dreamed of and denied. (PD)