Yamo (2011)

Documentary, 1h 6m

It's a film about today, about the choices we make in life. A film about time fleeing at full speed and time suspended. This is not a portrait of my mother, nor of my memory, nor of my house, nor of my family. Yamo is the mixture of all these elements which brings us towards a cut-down dialogue between two generations. A dialogue about dreams, failures, the present, and the future.

Writer & Director: Rami El-Nihawi

Producers: Monica Borgmann & Lokman Slim for UMAM Productions / Rami El-Nihawi for Sakado

Photography: Rami Nihawi & Maroon Asmar

Sound Recordist: Rayan Obeideyin

Editing: Anne de Mo

Sound Design: Lama Sawaya

War Generation - Beirut (1988)

Documentary, 50m

In Beirut, children grow up on the barricades and soon trade their toy pistols for real machine guns. War Generation - Beirut explores the lives, dreams and fears of three generations of young people living in the heart of the civil war in Lebanon. This seminal work from Jean Chamoun and Mai Masri remains one of the most powerful anti-war documents of the period.

Produced & Directed By: Jean Chamoun & Mai Masri

Photographed & Edited By: Mai Masri

Sound: Jean Chamoun

Narrator: Margaret Magnusson

Massacre (2005)

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In Memory of Lokman Slim

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Documentary, 1h 38m

Between September 16 and 18, 1982, for two nights and three days, the killers of Sabra and Shatila went about their heinous crimes. In the end, they had murdered between 1,000 and 3,000 Palestinian civilians, predominantly women, children and old people. The precise number of victims - both those killed and those missing - is not known to this very day. The perpetrators primarily originated from the ranks of the Forces Libanaises, a Christian militia affiliated to Israel. The logistics for this massacre were provided by the Israeli Army, under the auspices of the former Minister of Defence and current Minister President, Ariel Sharon. In 1982, the massacre in the Lebanese Palestinian camps deeply shook the public throughout the world, but today it has been (almost) entirely forgotten. This is despite the fact that it is a role model for all the massacres that followed: for example that in Rwanda or those committed during the Yugoslavian wars. Again and again, the unanswered questions surface: what drives people to such excesses of brutality, and how are the perpetrators able to live on? Massaker is - both in contents and aesthetically - a psycho-political study of six perpetrators, who participated in the massacre of Sabra and Shatila both on orders and on their own personal initiative. The film intertwines the mental dispositions of the killers with their political environment and broaches the phenomenon of collective violence through their accounts.

Directors: Monica Borgmann, Lokman Slim, Hermann Theissen

Production: Joachim Ortmanns for Lichtblick Film

Editing: Anne de Mo, Bernd Euscher

Cinematography: Nina Menkes

Winner of the Fipresci Preis, Panorama, Berlinale 2005

A World Not Ours (2012)

Documentary, 1h 33m

A World Not Ours is an intimate, humorous, portrait of three generations of exile in the refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh, in southern Lebanon. Based on a wealth of personal recordings, family archives, and historical footage, the film is a sensitive, and illuminating study of belonging, friendship, and family.

Director: Mahdi Fleifel

Prodocers: Patrick Campbell & Mahdi Fleifel

Editor: Michael Aaglund

Sound Designer: Zhe Wu

Fix Me (2009)

Documentary, 1h 38m

Palestinian filmmaker Raed Andoni doesn’t spare himself in his search for the cause of the headaches that have tormented him for many years. He allows a foreign crew to film his time spent in therapy—the fact that they don’t speak Arabic makes it easier for him to embark on the sessions without inhibitions.

The recurring themes throughout these meetings—filmed from behind a two-way mirror—are the consequences of the Israeli occupation. The same applies to Andoni’s everyday life, some of which he films himself. Checkpoints, police violence and the huge West Bank wall are part of it, in both mundane and powerful ways. He visits his mother, his politically aware sister and her son, and he also talks with the friends he made when he was a political prisoner. Their conversations may be serious, but they are filled with the black humor and philosophical detachment necessary to survive. Andoni’s quest leads to personal and universal insights, and it also allows repressed memories of traumatic events to rise to the surface. These memories formed the basis of his 2017 documentary Ghost Hunting.

Director: Raed Andoni

Production: Raed Andoni - Dar Films Production, Palmyre Baldinier - Les Films de Zayna, Nicolas Wadimoff - Akka Films, Nadia Turincev - Rouge International

Cinematography: Filip Zumbrunn, Aldo Mugnier

Editing: Tina Baz, Saed Andoni, Samer Qatta

Music: Eik Rug, Yousef Hbeisch

Palestine Blues (2006)

Documentary, 1h 12m

What is left for Palestinian farmers who learn that in 24hrs the Israeli Army will confiscate their lands for the construction of the wall? What do people do when their very survival is threatened by one of the world's most powerful armies? Palestine Blues tells the story of a village's confusion, desperation, and resistance, their daily victories and wrenching defeats. Unexpectedly filled with moments of poetry and humour this film's intimate access, unforgettable characters and story structure blur the line between documentary and narrative. Filmed at times with a hidden camera and at times under extreme duress, PalestinianAmerican filmmaker Nida Sinnokrot gives us a lasting chronicle of a people and their ancient lifegiving orchards, ever threatened by destruction.

Director: Nida Sinnokrot

Mars at Sunrise (2014)

Documentary, 1h 15m

A Palestinian artist tells a Jewish-American poet how he was tortured by a failed Israeli artist who wanted to turn him into an informant. Mars at Sunrise depicts a war waged on the imagination. A painter’s resistance, courage and spirit can never be imprisoned in this highly stylized story of the conflict of two frustrated artists on either side of Israel’s militarized borders.

Writer & Director: Jessica Habie

Cinematographer: Xavi José

Editors: Luis Carballar, EresOz

Starring: Ali Suliman, Guy Elhanan, Maisam Masri

Tell Your Tale, Little Bird (2007)

Documentary, 1h 30m

Seven militant women (fedaiyat) of the revolutionary generation tell the story of the Palestinian resistance through accounts of their own lives.

Cut from 35 hours of interviews with leaders of the armed struggle, the film presents an image of confident, unapologetic and proud feminine identity. Together, the memories of these women narrate the dream of a generation, yet unrealized.

Tell Your Tale, Little Bird is a testament to the power of remembrance, positioning memory as an essential element of feminist struggle. The film reminds us that this oral tradition may carry recollection of past resistance, but it is in the very practice of retelling women’s stories that the political act has persisted.

Director: Arab Loutfi

Subjects: Leila Khaled, Therese Halasa, Aisha Odeh, Rashida Obeida, Rasmea Odeh, Widad Qamari, Amina Dahbour

Private (2004)

Drama, 1h 30m

Mohammed (Mohammed Bakri), a Palestinian teacher, lives with his family in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. When violence erupts near their house, Mohammed refuses to evacuate, despite the fears of his wife, Samia (Areen Omari). Israeli soldiers occupy the residence's top floor, arousing the hatred of their son, Yusef (Amir Hasayen), and daughter, Mariam (Hend Ayoub), who spies on the men. Despite being given freedom to leave, Mohammed insists that his family stick together in their house.

Winner of the Golden Leopard at the 57th Locarno International Film Festival

Director: Saverio Costanzo

Starring: Mohammad Bakri, Lior Miller, Areen Omari, Hend Ayoub, Tomer Russo

Screenplay: Saverio Costanzo, Sayed Qashua, Alessio Cremonini, Camilla Costanzo

Editor: Francesca Calvelli

Producer: Mario Gianani

Ambulance (2016)

Documentary, 1h 20m

A raw, first-person account of the last war in Gaza in the summer of 2014. Mohamed Jabaly, a young man from Gaza City, joins an ambulance crew as war approaches, looking for his place in a country under siege, where at times there seems to be no foreseeable future. While thousands of things are published on the recurring violence in Gaza, the stories behind them remain hidden. Not this one.

Director: Mohamed Jabaly

Little Wars (1982)

Drama, 1h 48m

Little Wars tells the story of Lebanon’s civil war in 1975 through three characters. Talal, son of a Feudal lord, returns to his region after the disappearance of his father to become a warlord himself. Soraya is in love with Talal and tries to help him by abducting a businessman. Finally, Nabil, a photojournalist who uses the war to trade drugs and tries to pose as a hero, but is in fact very far from being one. Little stories happening during little wars.

The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 35th Cannes Film Festival in 1982.

Starring: Soraya Khoury, Nabil Ismail, Roger Hawa, Rifaat Tarabay and Rida Khoury

Written & Directed by: Maroun Bagdadi

Dialogue: Kamal Kassar

Cinematography: Edward Lachman and Heiner Hoelscher

Music: Gabrielle Yared

Editing: Joelle Van Effentere

presented in collaboration with

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