Episode 68 – From One to Many (Khalil Khalil)

Gabrielle Martin: Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I’m Gabrielle Martin, Push’s artistic director, and today’s episode highlights one individual story as the story of many, and theater as a space where we can rethink who we are and how our histories shape us.

I’m speaking with Bilal Alkhatib , co-director of Khalil Khalil alongside Khalil Albatran. Khalil Khalil is being presented at the Push Festival January 23rd to 25th, 2026. Named after his brother, a martyr of the first Palestinian Intifada, Khalil Albatran has lived in the shadow of another life. Through movement and music, Khalil Khalil becomes a dialogue between memory and becoming, a search for self beyond inheritance.

This performance offers a rare intimate reflection on identity, grief, and the body’s capacity to hold what history leaves behind. Bilal Alkhatib  is a Palestinian filmmaker working on documentary and fiction films that highlight the ordinary life of people in Palestine. Bilal started his career as a cinematographer in 2007, gradually developing his skills as a writer and director.

His documentaries and short films have been screened and won international awards in CinéPalestine, Paris, Carthage International Film Festival, and Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival, among others. Here is my conversation with Bilal.

Uh, before we get right into it, I want to acknowledge that this conversation is taking place on the stolen ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. And as we’re speaking about Khalil Khalil, we recognize that struggles for sovereignty and freedom are deeply intertwined, and we also hold space for the profound loss, ongoing displacement, and systemic violence that Palestinians continue to endure, and honor the artists who create in the midst of these conditions with courage and insistence.

Um, Bilal, I wanna talk to you… I, I have so many questions, but first I wanna hear, where are you? Where are you joining this call from? 

Bilal Alkhatib: Uh, first, thank you for this opportunity to talk about our work, me and Khalil Albatran. Uh, I’m based in Palestine, in occupied Palestine. Uh, spe- actually in Ramallah in West Bank.

Uh, yeah. 

Gabrielle Martin: Thank you. Okay, so Khalil Khalil begins from a name, one carried, inherited, and mourned. How did you and Khalil begin to translate the weight of that inheritance into movement and sound, and what did it mean to confront this story through performance? 

Bilal Alkhatib: Yeah, actually, this project about the names and identity, as you mentioned, I have known Khalil for a long time.

We are friends, and we work together in the cinema and the theater. Sorry. One day, actually, I was sitting at the cafe when Khalil came, uh, to me holding his iPad. He showed me a short video, uh, of himself overlaid with the old photos of his murdered brother, uh, that he was planning to put it in a social media.

Uh, it was actually the first time I discovered that Khalil named- carries the name of, uh, his older brother who was killed in the first Palestinian Intifada. Uh, he was 11 years old, old at that time, and he struggled with his family who sees him through his late brother. I saw his personal struggle in finding his own identity, and immediately I felt there is a powerful story there.

His struggles actually confirmed to me when later I visited Khalil family in his village in Idna, near Hebron, uh, and I saw books- pictures of, uh, his late brother in every corner of the house. When Khalil was 19, he saw his name on a… His name- Yeah, he was like, he was in the graveyard and he saw his name there, uh, for the first time.

It was, for him actually, the beginning of the story, and it’s drove him to leave the village and study theater and dancing in Ramallah. And it was like a way for him to express his identity and his struggle. This is Khalil way to express his feeling, and when I know all this information about Khalil, I felt, okay, there is a good story, we have to tell it.

This is everything how, how we develop everything later on about the, the, the play and the film as well. 

Gabrielle Martin: How did it… How did you start? Because your background… Was- is this your first theater project? Because I know you’re a filmmaker. 

Bilal Alkhatib: Yeah, it 

Gabrielle Martin: is- How did that start? How did you start to work together? 

Bilal Alkhatib: Yeah, it is the first, uh, experience for me as a theater director, and perhaps it- the last one as well.

I’m, I’m, my- I’m working on a, on a cinema, and this project actually began a feature documentary- Mm … and I was planning to do a feature documentary about the story. And we try to, uh, like, to build a theater, theatric, theater scenes that we put it on a film, and later on we became a very close friend. We see each other every day.

He came to my office, and we discuss about it, and we say that, “Okay, let’s do it a play. It’s alone, and the film, it’s alone.” O- on that way, we develop our work. Uh, and I- we start writing together. We write everything together from the first point. We actually work on this project since three years, between a film and the theater, and we try to mix everything like a cinematic language.

The, th- that the cinema I work, it’s a different than a theater. And, and to be honest, was very… I’m very excited that- I’m more gonna theater and discover this world. It’s, it’s amazing, but for me, like I, I, I believe in a cinema more. Yeah. 

Gabrielle Martin: You can be honest. You can be honest. It’s okay. Yeah. Um, yeah, so I mean, just to reiterate for the listeners, the work is co-directed by you and Khalil, but performed by Khalil alone- Yeah

and, you know, we’re understanding, you know, you’re really coming from this cinematic directorial lens- Yeah … um, and working with the real lived experience of Khalil’s story. Um, can you give us any more insight into the kind of conversations, uh, or tensions that shaped that kind of balance between something so personal, um, and then your kind of formal approach?

Bilal Alkhatib: Yeah. As I mentioned before, uh, for me, we are close friend before we are, like, directors, and that’s why when I heard Khalil’s story and I know that he named after his murdered brother, I felt there is a good story there. And Khalil, he told me that he tried many times, he want to tell the story as a theater play, but he afraid that how I can tell it in, in many ways.

After we make a lot of discussions about this story, about how we can tell it between a family or a community that believe in the names, like, their way to fight. We are in a political, uh, uh, complex situation, and the families, they name their son, their children, their- Because they believe that they’re our, they, it’s their way to fight, to continue fighting.

And for the second generation that when you have like a name with that memory, it’s heavy for you. It’s very heavy for you. And we will start actually our conversation from this point to tell that story about Khalil. It’s, you feel it’s unique story, and our relationship as friendship, it’s give us more space for this discussion to be like, okay, I can say everything what I, what I feel.

And for me as well, I’m a Palestinian and I live in this political complex situation, and there is like hundred like Khalil, they named after, uh, their martyr brother from the f- the families, actually the first family. We feel that, okay, let’s do both. Let’s do the film first, and we develop the play between, uh, like in different, uh, like multimedia.

We use a theater, we use music, we use dancing, we use archival material also that it’s very important that like we found a cassette that the previous Khalil in the first Palestinian Intifada, he was singing a song from the first Pa- Palestinian Intifada with the children. Khalil, a music composer and a music maker.

We collect all these song and we remix them, and we use them also on the play and on a film, part of the film as well. So, yeah, this all, all this, uh, like material we have and our friendship It’s make this, uh, story alive 

Gabrielle Martin: Very special. And I didn’t know all those details about the layers, for example, the archival sound that you’ve integrated.

Um, yeah, I would love to hear a little bit more because as you mentioned, the piece moves between so many mediums- Mm-hmm … and blurs the boundaries of form. I would love to hear a little bit more about the interplay between those mediums and how that shapes the audience’s encounter with grief and becoming, um, maybe a little bit about the kind of dramaturgical choices between, like, why theater, why dance in this moment, why film?

How, how are they all working together to tell this story? 

Bilal Alkhatib: Yeah. Yeah. For us, actually moving between all these elements, it’s very important to tell the story. Like, it’s not necess- necessary to see e- to say everything directly. For this reason, we, we use this, uh, multiple, uh, elements. Like through dance, we can…

Khalil can express his- himself the thing he, things he can’t say only on dancing. That’s why he, he started dancing. He said that, “I’m dancing because I feel something on, on my body. I can’t say it. I’m dancing.” That’s why he went to study theater to tell his story, like, to deal with his story. Unlike, uh, or, or as I mentioned also for the music, it’s came from the first Palestinian Intifada.

We talk about the archival material. We talk about the previous Khalil. Uh, and also it shaped the play for, uh, like, for the, the, the scenes, on the theater scenes that he tell the story about the Palestinian story, about Khalil’s story, the previous Khalil, and his story, how he struggled with his story about the family.

A- a- and also actually, we did a, we did a play in Bethlehem with Alhara Theater. The first opening it was. Uh, and Khalil family came and- It was like very special moment when they saw Khalil dancing and he tell their story actually. They remember Khalil, the previous one I mean. They remember everything, and all the people, they were like crying after the play.

We feel that, okay, we, we touch them. 

Gabrielle Martin: Yeah. For me, I love the interdisciplinarity of this project because I do feel that I feel like it’s like each, um, form of expression is used in a way that has a lot of dramaturgical sense. Like, it makes sense that some things are just told through the body. It makes sense that some things are told through snippets of archival material.

Like, it just feels like so much more of a rich, um, layered experience and poetic experience, just like when we’re talking about memory and lived experience. It’s not… It’s, it’s often more complex and not necessarily very linear and literal. Um, and so I really appreciated the, the use of different mediums for the experience.

I wanna talk a bit more, I know you’re a filmmaker whose work often foregrounds the texture of ordinary Palestinian life, and I wanna talk about your role in this a little bit more. Um- Yeah … what responsibilities did you feel as an outsider to his interior experience, um, but as you mentioned, an insider to its political and social reality?

Bilal Alkhatib: Yeah. So- 

Gabrielle Martin: Which I’m sure is something you’ve thought about in your other film projects as well. 

Bilal Alkhatib: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, to be honest, yeah, I, I begin, uh, really understand Khalil’s struggle, uh, of living with his brother name when I visited, uh, the family house and I saw Khalil pictures in every corner of the wall, and I felt it’s not Khalil’s story alone.

You know, we are like a Palestinian, and there is hundred like Khalil. I felt a moment it could be my story or any Palestinian. This is story about the person and his name. It’s like we said, it’s, it’s untold story And we, we, we heard our story through news, through television, but this story, it’s very different because it’s about the person and his name, living in, living in a, a context of occupation.

You know, I tries to show the complex, complex political situation we live in through this story, through a, a young man, uh, uh, and the personal struggle beyond being seen as, uh, either heroes or victims. This is very important for, for me actually. W- all the world, we need to see us as he- as heroes or victims.

We are not. We are humans. This is a very important for me to tell this story and to work with Khalil on it, as Khalil also, he believe I’m a human, you know? Uh, yeah, as, as I mentioned also, uh, there is a hundred in Palestine renamed after their murdered brothers, sisters, or member of their families. It drive me to ask this question, uh, what does it mean to carry the name of murder and, uh, why the families also rename their children after them?

It’s very important question for me to understand. Even I know that w- why they think, but sometimes it’s very important to ask, to ask ourself actually this question, the families, the community, the people they renamed after their murdered brother, they carry, carries the name. It’s very important to always to ask this question to continue our fight, even we believe that- We keep ourself through erasing.

We live in under incubation, the incubation they want to erase us. Uh, we keep ourself, we keep the names. It’s our way to fight. But i- it’s very important a- also to ask this question through, uh, through cinema, through theater, through arts. That’s what, why we are working on arts. We believe on that. Uh, that’s why I f- I feel that Khalil is lucky one.

He’s lucky he’s an artist. He can tell his story. There is hundred they can’t tell their stories. Yeah. 

Gabrielle Martin: Thank you for framing it that way because yes, even though it’s a very personal story, it’s, uh, it’s the way that you’ve told it, it’s a very human story, and it’s d- uh, you know, bringing up these universal questions of memory, inheritance, becoming, how we hold tragedy across generations or resistance or struggle.

Um, yeah. Yeah. And that’s really that, that humanness, um, is really clear, and I, I really connected with the work I think because of that, because it’s not, um- didactic. Yeah. Um, so I wanna talk a little bit about the difference between the play and the film. What… Can you tell me a little bit more about why two, and what one does versus the other?

Yeah. I mean, clearly there’s the logistics around dissemination. It’s much easier to tour a film as we are, you are really struggling waiting for a visa, which is reflective of, you know, we had our first visa application denied, um, because of discrimination in, you know, Canadian immigration. Um, so there’s that logistic reason, it’s easier to get the story out, but is there, are there other, um, impacts that you see in terms of like how the audience will receive this story through a film versus a live performance?

Bilal Alkhatib: Yeah. Yeah. As I mentioned, uh, before, everything start as a feature documentary. On a feature documentary, we more focus about the family. Uh, Khalil with, uh, his family, and we ask the same question actually, why the families that, uh, renamed their children after, uh, the murdered brother. We focus with the family, we focus with the archival material.

We live with Khalil through his life. It’s a documentary. It’s a m- more creative documentary. Also, how Khalil tell his story through dancing, through theater, through music. Yeah, but on the play, we have more space actually, because we are in one place, in one hour, in monodrama. We can tell everything there.

It’s different, you know? You live experience with in one hour in a dancing, in a theater scene. You hear the stories. Some stories you feel that it’s not, it’s not, not related to reality, but it’s came from your imagination, your feeling, what, what you feel about your name. It give you more space to tell the story about your feeling.

This is the power of theater. And also we use, like, the archival material with the mixed media. Khalil is dancing and we see, like, mixing between the previous Khalil and the second. Uh, together in a theater you can live this experience. You can choose what you want to see on a theater. But on a film, it’s different Actually, I’m a director of the film.

I, I have, like, my, um… What I’m thinking about the names also. I tell the story. On a theater, we work together, you know? 

Gabrielle Martin: Mm-hmm. 

Bilal Alkhatib: It- And even, like, Khalil tell his story, it’s a monodram- monodrama about himself. Sometimes you feel that it, it’s not represent all the Palestinian, Palestinian. They renamed after martyr brother.

It’s n- not all of them like Khalil, but all of them, they have the names, you know? Yeah. We, we live in, in a community, to be honest, that, uh, they saw the martyr in a paradise, you know, on a heaven. We are Muslims. It’s not easy to talk about the martyrs, you know? You have to be, like, very sensitive about this topic, and we are.

We believe on our community, what they are thinking, what they are believe actually. But we believe as well in our stories, untold the story, that we want to tell the story about the occupation, about the complex situation we live in, through Khalil’s story on a both side with a film and the theater as well.

But there is something different between… It’s two world, different world between a cinema, you see like in, in a point of the director, but in a theater you can see any corner you want to see. You can… It’s a different feeling 

Gabrielle Martin: Thank you for clarifying. Hopefully we can have the opportunity to bring the film in 2027 or ’28, whenever it’s ready- Yeah

and, and have our, the opportunity for our audiences to engage with that aspect of the story. Um, how did… My last question, just how does this project relate to your future projects? Do you have another project on the go right now? Uh- What’s next for you? 

Bilal Alkhatib: What next? The next to have, uh, Khalil 

Gabrielle Martin: project first.

My name’s- 

Bilal Alkhatib: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, to have Khalil project, then we’ll see. To be honest, I’m working more on, uh, uh, feature films. Uh- 

Gabrielle Martin: Okay … 

Bilal Alkhatib: but when I meet Khalil’s story, I feel, “Okay, I have to stop” 

Gabrielle Martin: Oh, wow … 

Bilal Alkhatib: because I feel this is… It’s not easy, like, to find a story that you feel, um, like, “I’m in love with it.” There is something different.

You have to be very sensitive to tell this story, and we can do, like, a creative documentary. Yeah, always there is a lot of projects on my mind I work on, but we’ll see. But, uh, I have to mention that this pro- uh, this play actually we’ve- we got, uh, to fund one from Bridge Council. They believe in us from the first, uh, yeah, from w- when we start working on it, they believe in our project, and we got the fund from them.

And, uh, Al Mawrid also from Beirut, they are on the board. And also, uh, we got a residency for Khalil, uh, from, uh, Les Sub in France with, supported with the French Consulate in, uh, in Jerusalem. Uh, we would like to thank them for, uh, they believe in our project, and for you Gabrielle as well, to have us, like, on the first premiere it will be in Vancouver.

We’ll see- So exciting … if we get a, if we get a visa. 

Gabrielle Martin: Yes, we are hopeful. Yeah. Putting all our energy there. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, and also thanks to Les Sub because, um, that’s how I found out about the project. Uh, Lucie there was, uh, they came to Vancouver with the project Plei in 2024. Um, so I’m so grateful for them for supporting the project and then also introducing me to it.

And yeah, in January we will have also a post-show discussion with Khalil, with translation- Yeah … as well, so audiences can also get to hear from him, and then come to the- Yeah … uh, opening party and dance to his music as well. Um, so lots planned for January, and thank you so much, Bilal, for sharing. 

Bilal Alkhatib: Thank you very much for this, uh, for having me and for this opportunity.

Thank you!