The Aesthetic of Liberation

The world is saturated with images of our death. But where are the images of our defiance? Gaza burns. Sudan bleeds. The Global South resists in every corner, yet that resistance is shadowed, censored, and erased. So much of what we see frames our struggle in grief, not in power.

My people—the Sudanese people—have risen up time and time again whenever injustice is imposed on the masses. The Palestinian people have resisted Zionist occupation for over 75 years and continue to fight for liberation despite everything thrown at them. Still, that fight is distorted at every turn. But this shouldn’t surprise us, because culture is a weapon. And in the hands of empire, it’s used against us.

Western media knows that images of resistance threaten its hegemony. It’s why we are bombarded with footage of death, not uprisings, and grief, not militancy. It’s why artists and organizers are shadowbanned, censored, and silenced. Because visibility itself, when tied to struggle, is dangerous. What we see shapes what we believe is possible. And when we’re only allowed to see mourning, not momentum, resistance becomes harder to imagine.

That understanding is what led me to make Bullets of Freedom. Not to tell a story of tragedy, but of a struggle destined for victory. To contribute to the political struggle, to make art that acts.

I’ve always believed that film should be a weapon, sharpened in service of the people. I didn’t want to just tell stories. I wanted to make work that resists.

But belief alone doesn’t pay for equipment. At one point, my camera broke and I had no money to fix it. For a while, I felt paralyzed, like I had something urgent to say but no means to say it. But that limitation became a test of my will. How far was I willing to go to communicate what I believed in? What would I do when the tools were taken away, when the resources weren’t there? It wasn’t the end of my filmmaking, it was a confrontation with its purpose. A moment that demanded I either give up or find a new way forward.

I turned to animation, not because I wanted to become an animator, but because I needed to communicate what I stand for. Over the course of nearly eight months, with nothing but time and political intent, I taught myself how to build a film from scratch. Using Blender, I constructed entire 3D environments, rigged characters, built lighting setups, and crafted each shot with precision and care. I turned to CLO3D for garment design and learned to simulate clothing that looked worn, urgent, and real. I taught myself how to animate fire, cast shadows across rubble, and sync every movement with the emotional weight it carried. This wasn’t just a technical process, it was a political one. Every frame was an act of resistance against silence and erasure. This kind of necessity—creating with whatever tools are available, in defiance of material constraints—is what Third Cinema has always embodied.

For filmmakers like Mustafa Abu Ali and the PLO Film Unit, cinema was never about polish or prestige. It was a weapon passed hand-to-hand in exile, edited in refugee camps, screened on bedsheets. It was about message over medium, urgency over industry. In that tradition, I wasn’t just animating a film, I was forging a weapon from the scraps I had at my disposal.

That weapon became Bullets of Freedom—an animated short film and direct-action project rooted in the legacy of Palestinian resistance.

The story follows a Palestinian fighter on a journey of political awakening guided by the revolutionary memory of Leila Khaled. Her voice—woven through archival interview clips—doesn’t just narrate the film, it defines its ideological spine. Each quote was intentionally matched with a specific scene, forming a visual dialogue between her words and the history they evoke. Nearly every frame references a real moment in the Palestinian struggle or nods to a film from the Palestinian Third Cinema tradition, whether through imagery, color, or camera angle. Bullets of Freedom was made to reward close watching. It invites viewers to return to it over and over, to discover a new layer of resistance with each viewing.

bullets of freedom poster

This wasn’t my first attempt at using animation as an intervention. In 2023, I released Pain Relief, a short film that explores the story of Sudanese painter and former political prisoner Ibrahim El-Salahi. This piece centered revolutionary memory in the face of trauma, and it marked my first step into using self-taught animation as a tool to preserve and project struggle. But with Bullets of Freedom, I wanted to push that further, not just to reflect resistance, but to materially contribute to it. At the center of Bullets of Freedom is a recreated version of Leila Khaled’s bullet ring—originally fashioned from the pin of her first grenade and a bullet from her pistol. I designed and produced 50 of these rings and launched a fundraiser, which contributed 100% of the proceeds to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for Gaza. Within a week, the project raised $4,000. By the end, we surpassed $5,000. It was a small but tangible example of what happens when art is politicized and intentionally tied to material solidarity.

Despite garnering hundreds of thousands of views on social media and selling out film screenings, several posts were removed or hidden. Like so much Palestinian content, the project was deliberately suppressed, flagged, restricted, and silenced under the guise of community standards. This wasn’t accidental. The work was treated as a threat. Because it was. Not to the people, but to those who uphold genocide, occupation, and the systems that sustain them. The moment the film reel becomes ammunition, every shot becomes a bullet fired against silence, echoing far beyond the screen.

When our art is tied to real action, to organizing, to the redistribution of resources and power, it ceases to be content and becomes a threat.

This is why platforms shadowban our posts, censor our images, and suppress our reach. On Instagram, fundraising links vanish. Palestinian flags are flagged. Stories that show solidarity are erased while apolitical aesthetics remain untouched. This is the algorithm doing the bidding of empire.

This is exactly why our art must move people and move with people. If it is not tied to action, if it doesn’t live beyond the platform, beyond the screen, it is too easily swallowed by the algorithm. We can’t afford symbolism without substance. In a time of global counterrevolution and digital repression, our culture must mobilize, organize, and resist. We need art that doesn’t just document struggle. We need art that is struggle.