Sara (2014)

Drama, 1h 25m

A screenwriter and a director are working on a film about Sara, a Palestinian girl in one of Gaza's refugee camps, who is a victim of an "honour killing". The screenwriter is unable to write an ending that is both compelling and fictitious - the happy ending that he had hoped for. Meanwhile, the director, who is insistent on upholding the truth, is as keen to end his film, as he is to help his friend, who is deeply affected by Sara's story. The film presents the different sides of Gaza, whose people are hurt by everyday issues as much as by death.

Director: Khalil al Mozian

Writers: Naim Al Khatib & Khalil al Mozian

Producer: Jamal Abu Alqumsan

Cinematography: Ibrahim Yaghi

Starring: Naim Al Khatib

Jamal Abu Alqumsan

Inas Al-Saqa

Haia Ashour

Emwas: Restoring Memories (2016)

Documentary, 52m

Filmmaker Dima Abu Ghoush was born in the village of Emwas, 16 miles from Jerusalem in the Latrun area of the West Bank. On the second day of the 1967 War, Dima, aged 2, and her family were expelled by the Israeli army, like all the other villagers, along with all inhabitants of the nearby villages of Yalo and Bayt Nuba. All her life, Dima has heard stories about Emwas, but she knows this place only as Canada Park, which was established by Israel in 1973 in the villages’ place. In 2009, with the help of family and friends, Dima decides to make a model of Emwas as it used to be. The film revives the lost village through the collective memory of those who used to live there and still dream of returning.

Director: Dima Abu Ghoush

Cinematography: Muayad Alayan

Editor: Toby Trotter

Producer: Baker Zarour

May in the Summer (2013)

Documentary, 1h 39m

May returns to her childhood home in Jordan for her wedding. Shortly after reuniting with her sisters and their long-since divorced parents, myriad familial and cultural conflicts lead May to question the big step she is about to take.

Writer & Director: Cherien Dabis

Cinematography: Brian Rigney Hubbard

Editor: Sabine Hoffman

Music: Kareem Roustom

Starring: Cherian Dabis

Bill Pullman

Alia Shawkat

Hiam Abbass

One More Jump (2019)

Documentary, 1h 13m

Gaza Parkour Team founder Abdallah has managed to escape Gaza. His friend Jehad still lives there, training young athletes for whom sport remains the only thing imbued with hope amidst the conflict. Is it better to leave to fulfil your dreams or stay and fight for your country? The question is the common thread running through this deeply moving account of sport, friendship, and exile.

Writer & Director: Emanuele Gerosa

Producer: Enrica Capra

Director of Photography: Matteo Delbò

Editor: Nicolò Tettamanti

Music: Zeno Gabaglio

Fixer in Gaza: Mohammed Abu Safia

Route 181 (2003)

Documentary, 4h 32m

Route 181, offers an unusual vision of the inhabitants of Palestine-Israel, a common vision of an Israeli and a Palestinian.

In the summer of 2002, for two long months, Eyal Sivan and Michel Khleifi travelled together from the south to the north of their country of birth, traced their trajectory on a map and called it Route 181. This virtual line follows the borders outlined in Resolution 181, which was adopted by the United Nations on November 29th 1947 to partition Palestine into two states.

As they travel along this route, they meet women and men, Israeli and Palestinian, young and old, civilians and soldiers, filming them in their everyday lives. Each of these characters has their own way of evoking the frontiers that separate them from their neighbours: concrete, barbed-wire, cynicism, humour, indifference, suspicion, aggression…Frontiers have been built on the hills and in the plains, on mountains and in valleys but above all inside the minds and souls of these two peoples and in the collective unconscious of both societies.

Route 181, Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel, takes us on a disorientating journey across this tiny territory with vast ramifications.

Directors: Michel Khleifi & Eyal Sivan

Private Investigation (2002)

Documentary, 1h 30m

".... I used to ... all Palestinian kids in Israel, used to hold the Israeli flag and sing for Israel in Arabic. Each year we used to do that, to celebrate, we would prepare dance shows, theater plays and songs! A lot of decorations and flags everywhere... And no one said anything. Imagine we used to stand on lines at the schoolyard each with his little blue and white flag. But the next day which is the Independence Day, a free day when all families and friends were supposed to go out on a picnic somewhere, or to the beach... my father always used to be sick and we never left the house on that specific day.

This is my story, this memory is mine. It goes back twenty years and it has branched out and played an essential part in my buildup, in what I am today. This film was born as I was rethinking all of this, and from my feeling haunted by the deafening silence of my country.

It is a documentary on living as a Palestinian in the Israeli state, holding an Israeli ID card and a Palestinian memory and belonging.”

Director: Ula Tabari

Samouni Road (2018)

Documentary, 2h 8m

In the rural outskirts of Gaza City a small community of farmers, the Samouni extended family, is about to celebrate a wedding. It's going to be the first celebration since the latest war. Amal, Fuad, their brothers and cousins have lost their parents, their houses and their olive trees. The neighborhood where they live is being rebuilt. As they replant trees and plow fields, they face their most difficult task: piecing together their own memory. Through these young survivors' recollections, Samouni Road conveys a deep, multifaceted portrait of a family before, during and after the tragic event that changed its life forever.

Director: Stefano Savona

Cast: Amal Samouni, Fouad Samouni

Producers: Penelope Bortoluzzi, Marco Alessi, Cécile Lestrade

Music: Giulia Tagliavia

Editor: Luc Forveille

Salt of This Sea (2008)

Drama, 1h 48m

Soraya, born in Brooklyn in a working class community of Palestinian refugees, discovers that her grandfather’s savings were frozen in a bank account in Jaffa when he was exiled in 1948. Stubborn, passionate and determined to reclaim what is hers, she fulfils her life-long dream of “returning” to Palestine. Once there, slowly she is taken apart by the reality around her and is forced to confront her own anger. She meets Emad, a young Palestinian whose ambition, contrary to hers, is to leave forever. Tired of the constraints that dictate their lives, they know in order to be free, they must take things into their own hands, even if it’s illegal. In this quest for life, we follow their trail through remains of Palestine.

Writer & Director: Annemarie Jacir

Starring: Suheir Hammad & Saleh Bakri

Cinematography: Benoît Chamaillard

Music: Kamran Rastegar

Editing: Michèle Hubinon

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

Jenin, Jenin (2002)

54 mins, Documentary

"Where is God," an elderly man desperately wonders when surveying the debris in the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin.

Directed and co-produced by Palestinian actor Mohammad Bakri, Jenin, Jenin includes testimony from Jenin residents after the Israeli army's Defensive Wall operation. The city and camp were the scenes of fierce fighting which ended with Jenin flattened and scores of Palestinians dead. Palestinians as well as numerous human rights groups accused Israel of committing war crimes in the attack. The United Nations appointed a commission of inquiry, but Israel refused to let its members visit the scene.

Banned in Israel, Jenin Jenin is dedicated to Iyad Samudi, the producer of the film, who returned home to Yamun after the shooting of the film was completed. On June 23, as Israeli forces besieged Yamun, Samudi was shot and killed as he was leaving a militarily-closed area with three friends.

Winner of Best Film — Carthage International Film Festival

Winner of the International Prize for Mediterranean Documentary Filmmaking & Reporting

Directed By: Mohammad Bakri

Produced by:
Iyad Samudi and Mohammad Bakri

Written by:
Mohammad Bakri

Edited by:
Leandro Pantanella

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

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