This was an interesting way to bring people from across the world into the reality of what it is to be in a city under siege.

Written and directed by Abdallah Al-Khatib, a Palestinian who has been in many a siege and refugee camp, it is set in a non-specific city that is under fire.

We move from individual to group, sometimes seeing the same people again in different situations. What connects them are the desperate searches for food and water and firewood. Their seeming acclimatisation to terrible conditions, that allows them to stop and talk and reminisce and joke, despite the terrible privations.

They are in a bombed out video store, talking about the movies they have seen, looking through the ledger to see who rented what last. Nostalgia but also a fight over whether videotape should be a fuel source or kept for some unspecified future posterity.

We have a man who is going to great length to have his girlfriend’s smuggled into his flat so they can have sex. And finally there is the makeshift field hospital where they have no blood or anaesthetic and barely any bandages. There is no real possibility of surviving but everyone is desperately trying to do what they can.

It does a job, although for a long time I felt that we were in a world of men under siege, with women there as catalysts and moral guides. The scene of the man waiting for his girlfriend was eventually played for laughs that seemed to tickle the humour of many at my screening. It’s a humour we are supposed to go along with, – men really want it, girls don’t but they’ll be coerced into putting out, even though they may end up damaged by it. It didn’t feel so funny to me.

I think, as a film, it might have had more effect if we had built a connection to any of the people and followed their story through. It felt episodic, and I struggled to tell the difference between the many bearded men in different situations and the occasional dark headed woman.

It feels a bit churlish to be nitpicking about something that is such a profoundly important topic. And so it is worthy, but I have a feeling it might blend into other films I have seen in similar settings where I can can’t quite place which one is which.