A road trip through the hills, valleys and villages of Palestine, following Murad, the cinema-lover who has made it his mission to bring Palestinian cinema to Palestinians in forgotten and marginal communities in the West Bank.
Murad Ismail
as Murad
The film explores the first Palestinian Intifada against the Israeli Occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It shows moving images of resistance against the Israeli occupation, while exploring the steadfast determination of the Palestinian People, confronting a modern army with stones. The film highlights the active and important role of women in the intifada.
They Break the Tree of Peace explores the reality of life under military occupation in Masafer Yatta, documenting the violence, intimidation, and demolitions carried out and coordinated by illegal settlers and Israeli occupation forces against Palestinian communities.
Documentary about war photographer James Nachtwey, considered by many the greatest war photographer ever.
Tawfiq’s Reef chronicles the plight of Palestinian fishermen in Gaza, heavily restricted in the area in which they can fish, often indebted, shot at, harassed or imprisoned by the Israeli Navy on the narrow sliver of fishing waters available to them off the Gaza coastline, making this one of the most dangerous professions in the world.
Set in the al-Mishal Cultural Center in Gaza before it was destroyed by an Israeli air strike on August 9, 2018, A Play Before The Bombs is a story that unfolds over a 4 year period. The film follows Abeer Ahmed, a young woman growing up in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp, the largest refugee camp in Gaza, as she and the other members of her cast and crew prepare to put on a play that focuses on a Palestinian woman’s right to receive inheritance. While the content of the play is tailored towards fostering a cultural discussion among Palestinians, neither the play nor the playhouse can escape the omnipresence of the Israeli siege on Gaza. A siege that shatters literal buildings as well as the hopes and dreams of the performers and community members who take refuge within the walls of al-Mishal in search of artistic fulfillment.
A portrait of two Palestinian women whose individual struggles both define and transcend the politics that have torn apart their homes and their lives. Farah Hatoum, a widow living with her children and grandchildren, and Sahar Khalifeh, a novelist from the West Bank.
The Israeli filmmaker Shai Corneli Polak records the building of the 'security wall' through Palestinian territory at the village of Bil'in. The villagers protest mostly peacefully, while the Israeli army doesn't react peacefully. By now the Israeli High Court has ruled that the building of the wall was illegal.
A thought-provoking documentary on the current and historical causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. political involvement.
Initially embarking on an unplanned personal filmmaking project, Ilias Boukhemoucha finds himself drawn to the overlooked corners and marginalized communities within Canadian cities.
An Iranian filmmaker participates in a series of video calls with a young Palestinian photojournalist who describes her life confined in Gaza during the current regional conflict.
Fourteen years after his first visit, Louis Theroux meets some of the growing community of religious-nationalist Israelis who have settled in the occupied West Bank.
An attempt to describe the everyday of a place that struggles for the most basic human rights: the Gaza Strip as a microcosm for the failure of civilization.
A documentary on how British double-dealing during the First World War ignited the conflict between Arab and Jew in the Middle East. The bitter struggle between Arab and Jew for control of the Holy Land has caused untold suffering in the Middle East for generations. It is often claimed that the crisis originated with Jewish emigration to Palestine and the foundation of the state of Israel. Yet the roots of the conflict are to be found much earlier – in British double-dealing during the First World War. This is a story of intrigue among rival empires; of misguided strategies; and of how conflicting promises to Arab and Jew created a legacy of bloodshed which determined the fate of the Middle East.
A young Toronto drag performer launches a fundraising campaign for her friend Sondos, a young mother trying to support her family in Palestine
When, in the late 1990s, Israeli student Teddy Katz exposed the massacre of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces in the village of Tantura, in May 1948, during the first Arab-Israeli war, he was initially praised for his pioneering work; but he was soon infamous and branded a traitor. Decades later, incendiary new evidence emerges that corroborates Teddy's findings.
As part of the organization of sporting, cultural and solidarity meetings between a team of amputee footballers from Gaza and the French amputee football team, the project coordinator, filmmaker-director followed with his camera the Palestinian footballers in Gaza before their departure, and during their stay in France.
In Layaly Badr’s documentary short, Road to Palestine, seven-year-old Layla – who has been badly injured in an air raid – lives in a refugee camp outside Palestine. Layla and her friends describe how they imagine Palestine, despite never having seen it.
Yousef Srouji’s childhood in Palestine wasn’t something that he and his parents spoke of as a family, so when he found a box of his mother’s home videos from the early 2000s, an especially perilous and tumultuous period in the West Bank, the tapes became a means for remembering and comprehending a painful past. The stories she captured illuminate the nature of life in a war zone, and familial bonds that cannot be broken. – Bedatri Choudhury (DocNYC)
