Saken (2014)

Documentary, 1h 30m

Saken is an observational documentary set in Jordan that follows the friendship of Ibrahim, a Palestinian fedai who was injured in Lebanon while on duty before the 1982 israeli invasion on Lebanon, leading to his paralysis, and Walid an Egyptian man who has been Ibrahim's companion and caretaker for the past 15 years. Saken is a film about friendship and sacrifice, how some people’s destinies are linked and hard to be broken.

Writer & Director: Sandra Madi
Producer: Majd Hijjawi
Director of Photography: Ali Saadi

My Love Awaits Me by the Sea (2013)

Documentary, 1h 20m

How do your return to a place that only exists in your mind? ‘My Love Awaits Me by the Sea’ is a poetic documentary narrating the story of the director Mais Darwazah, who takes a first time journey back to her homeland, Palestine. She leaves a secluded reality and follows a lover whom she has never met; Hasan, a Palestinian artist, who unveils a beautiful and utopian world to her. Fairytale and reality are woven together to question the elusiveness of place and the need to believe in dreams.

Director: Mais Darwazah

Producer: Rula Nasser

Return to Haifa (1982)

Drama, 1h 14m

Return to Haifa is based on Kanafani’s novel the plot of which takes place in 1967, when Palestinian refugees living in the newly occupied territories had an opportunity to visit the places from which they had been expelled in 1948. Saeed and Safiyya, a Palestinian couple expelled from Haifa in 1948, visit the home that had been their own. Miriam, a Holocaust survivor and now a Jewish Israeli citizen who lives in their house, lets them in. She moved there with her husband shortly after the Palestinian couple had been uprooted. The Palestinian couple returns to Haifa hoping to discover something about their baby, Khaldun, whom they had left at home that April morning in 1948, not realizing that neither of them would be able to return. The abandoned baby had been adopted by Miriam and her husband who gave him a Hebrew name – Dov, now a soldier in the Israeli army. This tragic encounter depicted by the movie emblematizes the Nakba’s being not only the tragedy of the Palestinian people but also of the Israeli Jews who cannot escape confronting this past and becoming accountable for it.

Director: Kassem Hawal

Infiltrators (2012)

Documentary, 1h 10m

The checkpoint is closed: “Detour, detour!” shouts a taxi driver, announcing the beginning of yet another uncertain search for a way around the barriers curtailing Palestinian movement in the West Bank.

Infiltrators is a visceral “road movie” that chronicles the daily travails of Palestinians of all backgrounds as they seek routes through, under, around, and over a bewildering matrix of barriers.

Following this high stakes “game” of cat and mouse with a handheld video camera, Khaled Jarrarʼs debut documentary was the standout success at the 2012 Dubai International Film Festival, winning the Muhr Arab Documentary Prize, the Special Jury Prize, and the International Critics Prize.

Director: Khaled Jarrar

Production: Sami Said, Mohanad Yaqubi

Editing: Gaetan Harem

Music: Carl Svensson

Giraffada (2013)

Drama, 1h 25m

Ziad is passionate about giraffes. His father works as a vet in a Palestinian zoo. The animals’ lives are threatened after an air raid and the only way to prevent a catastrophe is to go to Tel-Aviv. The conflict as seen by a child, part reality, part fairytale.

Director: Rani Massalha

After the book by: Rani Massalha

Screenplay: Xavier Nemo

Starring: Saleh Bakri; Laure De Clermont-Tonnerre

Production: Tony Copti

Distribution: Pyramid

L’Olivier (1976)

Documentary, 1h 23m

L’Olivier responds to a concern French public support for the Palestinian cause is diminishing in the wake of the 1972 Munich operation. Structured to chronicle the Palestinian story and to explain the current chapter in the struggle, the film calls for global militant solidarities and, particularly, for European political engagements.

Directors: Groupe Cinéma Vincennes (Ali Akika, Guy Chapoullie, Danièle Dubroux, Serge Le Péron, Jean Narboni, Dominique Villain) 

Mixing: Michel Coomo

Documents: Visnews, Newsreel, ORTF, Cinemathequ Palestinienne, Video.Out

Composition: Mustafa Al-Kurd

Illustrations: Mustapha Al-Hallaj

5 Minutes from Home (2007)

Documentary, 52m

The Jerusalem Airport lies along the road that links Jerusalem to Ramallah. It has been occupied by Israeli army since 1967, at a 5 kilometer distance from Ramallah and 10 kilometer distance from Jerusalem. Today, to the east of the runway, a huge military checkpoint blocks the Jerusalem-Ramallah road, a dead end street.
Nahed Awwad discovers that life has not always been like this, and that this sad spot used to be a place where international aircrafts landed in the 1950s and 1960s, when Palestinians traveled freely. The happy images and testimonies of the past contrast bitterly with those of the present where access is denied to the aviation zone that is now being besieged behind barbed wire and soon will be trapped behind the Israeli Separation Wall.
Nahed Awwad goes to meet this place, evoking the past in order to have a better apprehension of the present: today’s Palestinian reality that is marked by forgetfulness.

Director: Nahed Awwad

Producer by: Bertrand Glosset (Karavan Films), Nicolas Wadimoff (Akka Films)

Pomegranates and Myrrh (2009)

Drama, 1h 35m

Zaid and Kamar are Christian Palestinians; the film begins with their marriage in East Jerusalem. Their happiness as newly weds does not last long though, for soon after the wedding a conflict about the confiscation of Zaid’s olive farm ends up with him being put in prison for an indefinite period of time. Kamar is a strong and modern woman, and to survive this difficult period, she decides to pick up her love for dancing again and joins a group of traditional Palestinian folk dancers despite her new family's disapproval.
A new choreographer, the Palestinian returnee Kais joins the dance group and brings a fresh breeze to the group and to Kamar. Her life is thrown into turmoil as she becomes increasingly attached to Kais and is caught between her desire to dance and not breaking family and social taboos about the role of a prisoner's wife, while life under occupation rages on.

Director: Najwa Najjar

Producer: Hani Kort

Starring:

Hiam Abbass

Yasmine Al Massri

Ashraf Farah

Ali Suleiman

Samia Kuzmoz

Lea Tsmeal

Valentina Abu Aksa

Walid Abdul Salam

Lutf Nuwaisr

Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork (2009)

Documentary, 1h 29m

This political essay unfolds the invention and the visual history of the world-famous citrus fruit originating from Palestine, and known the world over as "Jaffa oranges". While the orange became the symbol of the Zionist enterprise and the state of Israel, for Palestinians it symbolises the loss of their homeland and its destruction. Through a careful reading of the visual representation of the brand, the film reflects on western phantasms related to the ‘Orient,’ the ‘holy land,’ and the State of Israel, and unveils the untold story of what was once a communal symbol, and an industry common to Arabs and Jews in Palestine.

Director: Eyal Sivan

Editor: Audrey Maurion

With the Participation of: Sami Abou Shahadeh, Ismaïl Abou Shahadeh, Haïm Gouri
Rona Sela, Elias Sanbar, Amnon Raz Krakotzkin, Gideon Makoff, Aviezer Chelouche, Tomer Chelouche

Tale of the Three Jewels (1995)

Drama, 1h 52m

Yussef is a twelve-year old Palestinian child of the First Intifada. With his father is in prison and his brother a fugitive from the Israeli army, he lives alone with his mother and sister. Though his life is marked by violence, he lives in his imagination, often escaping from the refugee-camp into the Gaza countryside.

While hunting for birds one day, Yussef meets Aida, a young gypsy girl who poses a daunting challenge, leading him into a perilous adventure.

This lyrical and moving work was shot in the early months of 1994, while Gaza remained under Israeli military occupation, and was the first feature film ever to be shot entirely in the Gaza Strip.

Writer & Director: Michel Khleifi

Produced by: Omar Al-Qattan and Michel Khleifi

Music: Abde Azaria

Production Manager: George Khleifi

Starring:

Mohammad Nahhal

Hana’a Nehmeh

Ghassan Abu Libdeh

Bushra Qaraman

Makram Khouri

Mohammad Bakri

3000 Nights (2015)

Drama, 1h 43m

Layal is a newlywed Palestinian schoolteacher who is falsely accused and incarcerated in an Israeli prison, where she gives birth to a baby boy. Through her struggle to protect her child and her relationship with the prisoners around her, she finds the strength to stand up for herself and fight for her son.

Layal is a newlywed Palestinian schoolteacher who is falsely accused and incarcerated in an Israeli prison, where she gives birth to a baby boy. Through her struggle to protect her child and her relationship with the prisoners around her, she finds the strength to stand up for herself and fight for her son.

Writer & Director: Mai Masri

Produced by: Nour Productions, Les Films D'ici, Orjouane Productions

Starring: Maisa Abd Elhadi, Nadira Omran, Rakeen Saad, Raeda Adon, Abeer Hadad, Anaheed Fayyad, Haifa Agha, Khitam Edelbi, Hana Chamoun, Izabel Ramadan, Laura Hawwa, Karim Saleh, Ahmad Al-Omari, Yussef Abu-Warda, Eman Hayel, George Khleifi, Hussein Nakhleh, Zaid Qada'

Laila's Birthday (2013)

Drama, 1h 11m

A judge is forced to become a taxi driver when the government runs out of money to pay his wages. On the day of his daughter's birthday, his wife insists that he needs to be home early with a present and a cake. Committed to the task, he sets out to make it home for Laila’s birthday. Everyday life in Palestine, however, has other plans.

Writer & Director: Rashid Masharawi

Cinematographers: Tarek Ben Abdallah, Néstor Sanz

Editor: Pascale Chavance

Music: Kaies Sellami

Producers: Mohamed Habib Attia, Peter van Vogelpoel and Rashid Masharawi

Starring: Mohammad Bakri, Areen Omari, Nour Zoubi

Omar (2013)

Drama, 1h 38m

Arrested after the death of an Israeli soldier, a Palestinian baker (Adam Bakri) agrees to work as an informant, but his true motives and alliances remain hidden.

Omar  is a 2013 Palestinian drama directed by Hany Abu-Assad. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Special Jury Prize. The film was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards, and was screened at the United Nations in New York on the 1st of May, 2014.

Director: Hany Abu-Assad

Cinematographer: Ehab Assal

Editors: Martin Brinkler, Eyas Salman

Starring: Adam Bakri, Leem Lubany, Walleed Zuaiter, Eyad Hourani, Samer Bisharat

The Wanted 18 (2014)

Documentary, 1h 15m

This animated documentary about the efforts of Palestinians in Beit Sahour to start a small local dairy industry during the First Intifada, hiding a herd of 18 dairy cows from Israeli security forces when the dairy collective was deemed a threat to Israel's national security. The film combines documentary interviews with those involved in the events, archival footage, drawings, black-and-white stop-motion animation as well as re-enactments, and was co-directed by Palestinian visual artist and director Amer Shomali and Canadian filmmaker Paul Cowan. The film was the Palestinian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards.

Directors: Amer Shomali, Paul Cowan

Producer: Saed Andoni

Cinematographers: German Gutierrez, Daniel Villeneuve

Editor: Aube Foglia

“Such a cleverly subversive act deserves a cleverly subversive mode of cinematic expression”

— Variety

Ghost Hunting (2017)

Documentary, 1h 34m

Director Raed Andoni places a newspaper advertisement in Ramallah. He is looking for former inmates of the Moskobiya interrogation centre in Jerusalem. In his ad he asks that the men should also have experience as craftsmen, architects or actors. After a casting process that almost feels like role play, he arranges for a replica of the centre’s interrogation rooms and cells to be built to scale inside a hall – under close supervision from the former inmates and based on their memories. In this realistic setting the men subsequently re-enact their interrogations, discuss details about the prison, and express the humiliation they experienced during their detention.

Using techniques that are reminiscent of the so-called ‘theatre of the oppressed’ they work together to dramatise their real-life experiences. Their reconstruction brings long repressed emotions and undealt with trauma to the fore. Working on the film takes its toll on the men – both physically and mentally. The director also appears in front of the camera; not only is he creating a stage for his protagonists, he is also coming to terms with his own fragmented memories of imprisonment in Moskobiya thirty years previously.

Directors: Raed Andoni

Producer: Palmyre Badinier

Cinematographer: Camille Cottagnoud

Editor: Gladys Joujou

Line Producer: Bassam Jarbawi

Assistant Director: Wadee Hanani

Starring: Ramzi Maqdisi, Atef Al-Akhras, Mohammed Khattab, Wafa Mari

“A boldly original take on the phantom menace of post-traumatic stress”

— Hollywood Reporter

Amreeka (2009)

Drama, 1h 36m

When a Palestinian single mom and her teenage son immigrate to small-town Illinois during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, they face racism, discrimination and unemployment in their adopted homeland.

Winner of the FIPRESCI Critics Prize at Cannes in 2009 and voted one of the top ten independent films of the year by the National Board of Review.

Writer & Director: Cherien Dabis

Starring: Nisreen Faour, Melkar Muallem, Hiam Abbass and Alia Shawkat

“Amreeka isn’t a story of American prejudice, but of American reality, the good and the bad.”

— Roger Ebert

Dégradé (2015)

Drama, 1h 25m

The feature debut of twin brothers Arab and Tarzan Nasser, Dégradé takes place entirely in a women’s hair salon in Gaza. As a confrontation between the police and a local gangster plays-out beyond the salon’s walls, the women are trapped inside for thirteen hours. The film blends caricature and reality to emphasise the complexity of life in Gaza where people are afflicted by multiple nodes of pressure, and where the social space of women is increasingly circumscribed by these pressures.

Dégradé premiered in competition at Cannes Film Festival in 2015, in the International Critics Week section.

Directors: Arab Nasser, Tarzan Nasser

Writers: Arab Nasser, Tarzan Nasser

Producer: Rashid Abdelhamid

Cinematographer: Eric Devin

Editors: Sophie Reine, Eyas Salman

Starring: Hiam Abbass, Mais Abd Elhadi, Victoria Balitska