THE DEER’S TOOTH: A story of grief, family, and displacement

Saif Hammash’s Palestinian short THE DEER’S TOOTH is an exploration of the lengths people will go to in times of extraneous circumstances, like a war, to eke out a semblance of a normal life by pursuing seemingly mundane or trivial things that hold great weight within their hearts.

The film centers around Wissam, a young man from the Dheisheh refugee camp — where the film was shot — who embarks on a perilous journey in order to fulfill his little brother’s wish: To throw his milk tooth into the sea.

We watch on as the film’s poignant storyline starts with Wissam and his mother grieving the death of his little brother Khalid, among other children who were martyred by the occupation forces in Palestine.

Wissam then spends a good portion of the film reminiscing about Khalid and remembers a promise he had made to him when the little boy lost a milk tooth: To throw the milk tooth into the sea, which Khalid loved and had always hoped to visit.

Our protagonist finds Khalid’s milk tooth tucked away in his drawer, along with an old children’s rhyme: “O sea, O sea take the donkey’s tooth and give me the deer’s tooth.” He then makes up his mind to embark on the perilous journey beyond the wall to get to the sea and fulfill his brother’s last wish.

Despite his employer and his friend condemning these ideas and asking him to focus on his life and job instead, fulfilling his promise to Khalid eats away at Wissam and becomes all he can think about, and eventually, Wissam sets off to venture behind the wall and make good on his promise to his brother.

In THE DEER’S TOOTH, a simple childhood tradition transforms into one man’s journey through grief and into resilience and hope, turning what should be a lighthearted children’s ritual into an act of resistance.

Through a simple, yet deeply evocative approach, the film depicts both the physical and symbolic barriers that Palestinian refugees face in their everyday lives and highlights Hammash’s attempt to portray the internal conflict that Palestinians — especially those living in a refugee camp — live with between their inability to adapt to the imposed political and historical reality on the one hand and their desire for self-fulfillment despite the dangers surrounding them.

THE DEER’S TOOTH was shot in the Dheisheh refugee camp, which was established in 1949 on an area of 0.31 square kilometers within the municipality of Bethlehem in the West Bank. Dheisheh is one of 68 Palestinian refugee camps scattered across the region and neighboring countries, housing residents who originally came from over 45 villages west of Jerusalem and Hebron.

It was lensed by Ibrahim Handal, with music by Victor Kawwas, and sound by Saliba Rishmawi. The film stars Wisam Al-Jafari, Reada Ghazaleh, Yasmin Shalaldeh, and Jacir Abedrabou.

In terms of the bigger companies at play, the film was supervised by Majdi El-Omari, and produced by Dar Al Kalima, with MAD World handling the film’s worldwide sales and MAD Distribution handling both sales and distribution in the Arab-speaking region.

Saif Hammash is a Palestinian filmmaking student based in the Dheisheh Refugee Camp in Bethlehem. While pursuing his degree, he directed a short fiction film as well as an experimental and documentary film. He has also worked on several other films as a scriptwriter, assistant director, editor, and camera assistant, and on the third edition of the Palestinian Refugees Film Festival as an editor in September 2022.

Saif’s filmography includes ESCAPE ATTEMPT and CLICK OF A BUTTON.