Hadid sister helps launch Palestinian film streaming site

CANNES

Alana Hadid, the older sister of supermodels Gigi and Bella Hadid, has helped set up a new film streaming platform to bring Palestinian perspectives to a global audience, its founders confirmed on May 15.

Watermelon+ was launched at the Cannes film festival as more than 100 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza on May 15. At least 80 died a day earlier.

"Unless we get [Palestinian] voices out there, nothing's going to change," said Badie Ali, one of two U.S.-born Palestinian brothers who founded the website, where Hadid is creative director.

A model and activist, her father, property developer Mohamed Anwar Hadid, is Palestinian.

Showing "neglected or silenced" Palestinian perspectives was particularly important in the United States, an ally of Israel, Ali insisted.

The platform offers around 60 films, including several set in Gaza.

They span from Emmy-awarded documentary "Five Broken Cameras" to "The Wanted 18," a comic true story about West Bank villagers hiding cows inside their houses from Israeli troops during the First Intifada.

Co-founder Hamza Ali said the aim was to humanize Palestinians.

"It's dehumanization and erasure that contribute to the politics," he said.

"We're more than our suffering. We're a warm, hospitable, creative, funny people."

Israeli bombardment has killed more than 53,000 people in Gaza, according to the besieged Hamas-run territory's health ministry, and an aid blockade also threatens famine.

Israeli leaders have expressed a desire to empty the territory of its more than two million inhabitants as part of the war sparked by Palestinian group Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.