“Zainab” wants the world to know that she dreams of a Gaza without war and free from religious coercion, where “everyone can find income and a livelihood.” In this new place, “women are free to remove the hijab or to wear it.” It is a Gaza “open to the world,” with movie theaters and bars like any other city. “I don’t want there to be wars and rockets,” she says. “We and the Israelis are one people… all of us should live in peace.”

In stark contrast to Zainab’s dream for the future, Freedom House ranks Gaza an overall score of 11/100, noting that “the political rights and civil liberties of Gaza Strip residents are severely constrained.” Al-Nasser Cinema in Gaza City, once among the largest in the Middle East, was sealed with concrete after clerics denounced it as “pornographic.” Muhammad Aeraar, a Hamas official from the Ministry of Culture, dismissed cinema as “a violation of the community’s traditions and corrosive to its values,” and claimed that “Gazan citizens do not miss the cinema, nor do they sense its absence.”

Many feel differently. On a rare occasion when Hamas permitted a film screening, hundreds attended. Audience members told foreign press, “We need to live like humans, with cinemas, public spaces and parks.”