“Comradeship Compels It”: Jason Soo on the Challenges of Making and Releasing ‘Al Awda’

In 2018, Singaporean filmmaker Jason Soo boarded the Al Awda (The Return in Arabic) with the intention of making a documentary about the surgeon, activist. and political exile, Dr. Ang Swee Chai. For six years, Soo reworked the footage he retained after the Israeli navy raided the Al Awda with videos captured by activists onboard, which filled in the gaps left by the footage that was confiscated by the Israeli navy. The resulting film Al Awda (2024), is less a portrait of Dr. Ang than a documentary about activism itself. 

Al Awda documents one of many attempts by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. As the crew of 22 activists from 15 countries sail towards an inevitable confrontation with the Israeli navy, senior activists with previous experience on other boats conduct training sessions in non-violent resistance. The conversations that ensue are predicated on the freedom of an individual to choose the extent of their resistance to the Israeli military, all the while keeping in mind that their decision would affect the most vulnerable people onboard. 

Premiering at the 35th Singapore International Film Festival, Al Awda was “passed with condition” by the state’s media regulation board, meaning that the film would have to apply for another license for other local screening. It also means that local distribution is almost impossible since the possibility of future screenings rests on the caprice of the government.  Presented alongside Palestinian filmmaker Razan AlSalah’s A Stone’s Throw (2024) and Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s No Other Land (2024), Al Awda situates present-day acts of co-resistance as part of a historical lineage of solidarity with Palestine. We spoke to Soo about Singaporean politics and its hardline stance for “neutrality,” the narrative function of a director’s voiceover, and a documentary practice for a free Palestine. At Soo’s request, the interview below took place over email and has been edited.

DOCUMENTARY: In the press kit, you characterized your film Al Awda as an “ethnography of activism.” How would you describe the link between your activism and its relationship to your documentary practice?

JASON SOO: Generally speaking, I think of activism as a potential that is inherent in all of us, something we can actualize when we are engaged in any activity or profession. In that sense, activism is like an ethic, a relationship that you have with yourself, in terms of how you relate to your environment and to other people. 

In making Al Awda, I had to bridge the distance between myself and the activists. So it was necessary to establish a relationship of trust and to some extent, become an activist myself. At the same time, in order to make the film, I needed some form of critical distance from the activists. I felt very much like an outsider or like an ethnographer who is embedded in an unfamiliar community of activists. It’s also significant that the activists on Al Awda come from different countries, and many of them hardly knew each other before coming onto the boat. Perhaps it can be said that all of us are just ethnographers trying to belong and to make sense of the world around us. 

D: Your films before Al Awda focused on historical events that happened in Singapore. What made you turn your gaze to Palestine in 2018 and led you onboard the Freedom Flotilla movement?

JS: I didn’t set out to make a film about Palestine. In my research on Operation Spectrum, I read about how  human rights lawyer Francis Khoo and his wife Dr. Ang Swee Chai escaped to London in 1977 in order to avoid arrest by the secret police in Singapore. In her book From Beirut to Jerusalem: A Woman Surgeon with the Palestinians, Dr. Ang wrote about her experience as an orthopedic surgeon in the refugee camps of Beirut. There, she witnessed the massacres at Sabra and Shatila and so began her lifelong journey of advocacy with Palestinians. When I read her book, I immediately wanted to make a film about her work, but I didn’t know how. In 2018, I reached out to her after a friend alerted me that Dr. Ang was sailing to break the blockade of Gaza. I think that there’s something in the nature of activism that pushes us to go beyond ourselves, to transgress boundaries, and to create these new pathways towards international solidarity.

D: What does a world premiere for your film in Singapore mean to you? I’m asking this in relation to the way the local government insists on neutrality in international affairs that separates Singapore from the rest of the world. Recently, three women were also charged for organizing a group of concerned people to deliver letters supporting Palestine to the Istana.

JS: To be neutral is to be complicit. Neutrality is an unconscionable stance and an illusion. Singapore is not really neutral. The government may pretend or convince itself that it is neutral, but it is enabling the genocide though military collaboration with Israeli weapons manufacturers, weapons that are tested in Gaza and the West Bank. It’s a topsy-turvy world when the peaceful actions of activists are criminalized, and the criminal actions of governments are protected by law. In Singapore, the film has been rated R21 by the censorship board, which means that the 19 or 20 year old youths who are conscripted into mandatory national service are considered old enough to die in combat, but not mature enough to watch a film that puts into practice non-violent action.

D: 6 years have passed since you were on the Al Awda. I’m curious about why you’re releasing the film years after the event. Have you been working on the film throughout this duration? How has your relationship with the film changed?

JS: I have taken way longer to complete the film than I had expected. The main difficulty was to tell a story that would be adequate to the aspirations of the activists. As late as last year, I considered shooting scenes in Gaza itself. I don’t think my relationship to the film has changed in all these years. I’ve always felt the urgency to complete the film. Of course, that urgency has only increased in the context of the last 12 months of a live-streamed genocide. 

D: I was really struck by how the captains of the Al Awda insisted on the right of the individual to choose to stop or continue resisting. It wasn’t that they were asking people to be selfish; in fact they asked that the choice to resist or not be made with what the weakest person onboard the boat can withstand. It felt like a profound moment of consideration for both the autonomy of the individual and the community they are part of. I was wondering if that had anything to do with why you chose to use your own voice as a voiceover in the film even as you worked to document the comradeship between the activists on the boat?

JS: I never liked hearing or seeing myself on screen, and I tried to avoid that as far as possible, but it gradually became clear that I needed to be a character in the film, just like the other activists. So the voiceover, besides being a narrative device to do all sorts of useful things in relation to the story, represents on a more fundamental level my transformation as not just a filmmaker, but also a character in the film. And you’re right to say that this transformation relates closely to the idea of comradeship; you could say that the comradeship compels it. Becoming a character in the film is a way of showing and expressing my solidarity with the activists.

D: A number of activists on the boat had made the trip to break the blockade multiple times and had failed at every attempt. Yet they return each time to try and do it anyway. I was thinking about this in relation to what the captain says when asked when they should stop resisting, “These [Israeli navy personnel], whatever resistance we are doing… as long as we don’t catch it on camera or something, then maybe it doesn’t help anything.” Why is it important that resistance is documented, witnessed and circulated to the world?

JS: It would have been a real triumph if the activists had managed to break the blockade and arrive in Gaza. But the struggle for Palestine is fought not only in Gaza and the West Bank, it is also taking place all over the world, in newsrooms, on our mobile screens, and even on the supermarket aisle. In a world that is as inter-connected as ours, all of us have a role to play. The obvious comparison is to apartheid in South Africa, which ended after decades of local resistance, along with the substantial role played by countries that advocated for boycott, sanctions, and divestment from a racist apartheid regime. I’m also thinking about how in 1936, 50,000 people from all over the world made their way to Spain to fight against the fascists in the name of international solidarity. The least we can do now is to participate in the movement to boycott, sanction, and divest from the Israeli government that has so blatantly announced and executed a genocide right in front of our eyes. 

D: How would you relate witnessing acts of resistance to your own documentary practice?

JS: The complicity and hypocrisy of mainstream mass media and so many political leaders in the last 12 months is something unprecedented. When journalism fails to fulfill its role of informing and educating the public, it becomes even more important that we create alternatives. I believe that cinema can play a role in inspiring people to take action. 

Sasha Han is a film writer interested in the circulation of moving images in Southeast Asia. Her writing has been published by MARG1N magazine, Mekong Review, and MUBI Notebook.