Rainbow (2004)

Documentary 40m

A video essay meditating on the aftermath of "Operation Rainbow", an Israeli military operation in the Palestinian town of Rafah, Gaza Strip, in 2004.

“These are people who have crossed my path...Some of these rose from among the debris. Carrying their tears, some were looking for answers to worries that haunted them...Others were exhausted by contemplating the reality ...They appeared like me...I used to love the camera and believe in what it could do to transfer the pain...forget sorrows, or may be promise of a better life.”

Director: Abdel Salam Shehada

Gaza Strip (2002)

Documentary 74m

A "slice-of-life" documentary set in Gaza City, following the inner and outer lives of a 13-year-old boy, a self-styled revolutionary, as he struggles to find meaning in his life while his friends are killed around him, one by one.

“In early 2001 I spent three months in Gaza filming material for this documentary, GAZA STRIP, working with local fixer and translator, Mohammed Mohanna. The second Palestinian uprising against Israeli military occupation had begun in September, 2000, four months before I started filming.

Though the period this documentary covers includes the election of Ariel Sharon as Israeli Prime Minister and large incursions by the Israeli Defense Forces into Gaza, in retrospect the time depicted here is one of relative quiet. More recent Israeli attacks against Gaza have been far more destructive and deadly than what falls into the scope of this film.

The time since the release of this film in 2002 has seen many changes, including the evacuation of illegal Israeli settlements inside the Gaza Strip and the election of Hamas. However, the occupation and attacks against Gaza continue, and the blockade of Gaza has intensified. It is my hope that this film will provide a partial introduction to Gaza for those who have come to the subject recently, and also serve as a document of its time.”

Directors: James Longley

Not Just Your Picture (2021)

Documentary 55m

Not Just Your Picture tells the story of siblings Layla (24) and Ramsis (26), born and raised in the city of Siegen in Germany. Their Palestinian father, Ibrahim, came to study architecture in Germany in the 80’s, but moved back to the Gaza Strip following his divorce from their German mother. He then remarried and had five children. In the summer of 2014, during an attack on Gaza, Ibrahim, his wife and their five children were killed after the building they were sheltering in was hit by an Israeli airstrike and collapsed.

Layla and Ramsis’ grief set them on a journey of political awakening: Layla travels to Palestine, hoping to learn about her roots and see the reality on the ground for herself. Ramsis tours in Europe, retelling his family’s story while pursuing a legal case against the State of Israel through the German courts. In the meantime, their family in Gaza is trying to come to terms with the aftermath of the tragedy as their uncle Saleh wishes to meet his brother’s children who he never saw as adults. Moving between Gaza and Germany, the past and the present, the film follows the family’s wish to reunite, mourning their loved ones and search for unattainable justice.

Directors: Anne Paq, Dror Dayan

Editor: Dror Dayan

Additional Cinematography: Ezz Zaanoun, Michal Grosz, Ahmad Al-Bazz, Eloise Bollack

Produced in Association with: Al Jazeera Media Network

Erasmus in Gaza (2022)

Documentary 1h 28m

Riccardo, an Italian final-year medical student, is going on Erasmus. The destination: Gaza. Entering is not easy, requiring permission from three different authorities: the Israeli army, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

In crossing the border between Israel and the Strip, Riccardo also crosses the boundary between adolescence and adulthood, a journey of personal struggle that will test whether or not he truly has the strength to pursue his dreams.

Directors: Chiara Avesani, Matteo Delbò

Editor: Antonio Labbro Francia

Producer: Eva Fontanals

Bank of Targets (2021)

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In Memory of Roshdi Sarraj

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Documentary 25m

Winner of the Jury’s Special Mention at the 18th Al Ard Film Festival in Sardinia, Bank of Targets documents Israel’s targeting of civilian infrastructure in Gaza in 2021. Through a first-hand account of the bombing of a residential building, Sarraj highlights the efforts of journalists to create a record of war crimes as they unfold.

Director: Roshdi Sarraj

Production: Ain Media

Alpes (2021)

Documentary 65m

In the heart of the Alps, in the secrecy of the dark and cold night, women and men come to the aid of migrants who emerge from the French-Italian border. In solidarity, they organise themselves illegally to escape police controls and repression on these mountain paths and help those who try to enter France at the risk of their lives. Alps is a journey that departs from solidarity and leads to an encounter with humanity.

Director: Nael Khleifi

Producer: Alice Lemaire

Image: Diego Romero Suarez Llanos
            Thomas de Hemptine
            Sébastien Alouf
            Nael Khleifi

Sound: Barbara Perez Bugallo
             Céline Bodson

Editing: Pauline Fonsny

Naji Al-Ali: An Artist with Vision (1999)

Documentary 53m

In July 1987 the Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-Ali was shot by an unknown assassin. This film traces his life and work from his birth in Galilee to his death in London. It examines the forces that shaped Naji as an artist and as a human being, and shows how his experiences mirror that of other exiled Palestinians.

Director: Kasim Abid

Standstill (2013)

Drama, 1h 44m

After the political crisis in Kanesatake’s reserve, Arihote (Atewena:ron David Deerhouse), a Kanienkehaka "Mohawk", sometime war photographer, and his wife parted ways. While trying to help his son who has committed a misdemeanor, Arihote, whose life is in a rut, happens upon the revenge killing of a neighbor by Wedad (Meissoon Azzaria), a Palestinian refugee. Loath to get involved in a police investigation, Arihote finds himself helping Wedad to leave the crime scene. Arihote finally begins to rebuild his relationship with his son, and to focus on resolving his feelings about both his wife’s departure and his father’s suicide. The chance encounter between Arihote and Wedad sets each of them on a new course.

Writer & Director: Majdi El-Omari

Cinematographer: Stéphanie Weber Biron

Music: Antoine Bustros

Editor: Majdi El-Omari

Starring:

Atewena:Ron David Deerhous

Meissoon Azzaria

Iohahi:Io Curotte

Skawennati Madelaine Montour

Tatum Ieronhienhawi Mccomber

This Is My Picture When I Was Dead (2010)

Documentary, 1h 14m

Athens, 1983. The world press reports that 4-year old Bashir is killed in the assassination of his father, Mamoun Mraish, a top PLO lieutenant. Father and son are declared dead but when they arrive at the hospital Bashir turns out to be still alive. But if Bashir is fully alive today, what happened to the dream he and his father were believed to have died for?

Writer & Director: Mahmoud al Massad

Cinematographer: Bassam Sammy Chekhes

Original Music by: Gingger Shankar

Starring:

Bashir Mammon Mraish

Nahil Mammon Mraish

Ayoub Belkasmi

Naji Anu Nowar

Nordin Orahhou

Divine Intervention (2002)

Comedy, 1h 32m

In Nazareth, under a guise of banal normalcy, the town embraces folly. Under pressure from his failing business, a man takes matters into his own hands and tries to break a chain reaction of petty feuds. He breaks down himself. The man is E.S.' father. A love story takes place between a Palestinian man living in Jerusalem and a Palestinian woman from Ramallah. The man - E.S. - shifts between his ailing father and his love life, trying to keep both alive. Because of the political situation, the woman's freedom of movement ends at the Israeli army checkpoint between the two cities. Barred from crossing, the lovers' intimate encounters take place on a deserted lot right beside the checkpoint. The lovers are unable to exempt reality from occupation. They are unable to preserve their intimacy in the face of a siege. A complicity of solemn desire begins to generate violent repercussions and against the odds, their angry hearts counter-attack with spasms of spectacular fantasy.

Director: Elia Suleiman

Cinematographer: Marc-André Batigne

Editor: Véronique Lange

Starring:

Elia Suleiman

Manal Khader

George Ibrahim

Salwa Nakkara

To My Father (2008)

Documentary, 53m

“Those were days when people prettier, when eyes were filled with colour, even in black and white. What has changed - the camera, or the eye?" asks Abdel Salam Shehadah's poetic homage to the studio photographers of the 1950's - 70's. Set partly in a refugee camp in Rafah, the film looks back at fifty years of Palestinian and Arab history, told through the photographs, reportage and the voices of these photographers today.

Director: Abdel Salam Shehada

Producer: Qassim Ali

Cinematographer: Abdel Salam Shehada

Editor: Abdelrahman Hussien

Trip Along Exodus (2015)

Documentary, 2h

Trip Along Exodus is a film/poem that recreates the last 70 years of Palestinian and Arab politics seen through the prism of the life of the filmmaker’s father, Dr. Elias Shoufani, a leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, an academic and leftist intellectual who was one of the leaders of the opposition to Arafat within Fatah for 20 years. The film language uses archive, poetry, family photos/8mm films, glitter, cartoons, animation, macro-photography, interviews, and other multimedia formats in a video-art amalgam—a personal and political memoir.

Director: Hind Shoufani

Editor: Ayman Nahle

Cinematography: Adam Shapiro, Lafi, Nick Zajicek, Hind Shoufani, Jato Smith, Raja2i Khatib, Hussam Hariri, Atilio Menendez Ferrer.

Music: Jean Madani, Bassel Abbas, Munma.

Color: Belal Hibri

Graphics: Rayan Ghammachi

Kings and Extras (2004)

Documentary, 1h 2m

The films of the PLO Media Unit were supposed to show a self-determined image of Palestinian reality – and they went missing during the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982. In a “road-movie” from Palestine to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, the director Azza El-Hassan follows the contradicting and confusing clues as to the whereabouts of the lost archive. The increasingly absurd search finally leads her to a martyr’s graveyard, where the films are said to be buried and where, for obvious reasons, no one is willing to dig. While Azza’s search for lost images leads her down various dead ends, she is confronted with new clues and starts to construct her own story. The film reflects the situation in the Middle East – a failed revolution, the problematic relationship with the Arab neighbours, the question of a Palestinian identity today. Azza El-Hassan shows myths, life stories and life lies, the personal effects of defeat and loss. She even brings some humour to the tragedy of the situation – to which she simultaneously feels a sense of belonging and opposition.

Writer & Director: Azza El-Hassan

Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory (2016)

Documentary, 1h 5m

Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory is a meditation on the Palestinian people's struggle to produce an image and self-representation on their own terms in the 1960s and 1970s, with the establishment of the Palestine Film Unit as part of the PLO. Unearthing films stored in archives across the world after an unprecedented research and access, the film begins with popular representations of modern Palestine and traces the works of militant filmmakers in reclaiming image and narrative through revolutionary and militant cinema. In resurrecting a forgotten memory of struggle, Off Frame reanimates what is within the frame, but also weaves a critical reflection by looking for what is outside it, or what is off frame.

Director: Mohanad Yaqubi

Writers: Reem Shilleh & Mohanad Yaqubi

Editors: Ramzi Hazboun & David Osit

“Off Frame is a work that is unavoidably steeped in questions of the past but doubly functions as a reflection on our position as spectators “looking back” at history. ”

— Ivan Čerečina, 4:3

dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997)

Documentary, 1h 8m

Buckle up for dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, the acclaimed hijacking documentary that eerily foreshadowed 9-11. We meet the romantic skyjackers who fought their revolutions and won airtime on the passenger planes of the 1960’s. By the 1990s, such characters apparently are no more, replaced on our TV screens by stories of state-sponsored suitcase bombs.

Director Johan Grimonprez investigates the politics behind this change, at the same time unwrapping our own complicity in the urge for ultimate disaster. Playing on Don DeLillo’s riff in the novel MAO II: ‘what terrorists gain, novelists lose’ and ‘home is a failed idea’, he blends archive hijackings with surreal and banal themes including fast food, pet statistics, disco and his quirky home movies. David Shea wrote the superb soundtrack to this roller coaster through history, best described in the words of one hijacked Pepsi executive as: “running the gamut of many emotions: from surprise to shock, to fear, to joy, to laughter and then again, fear.”

Writer & Director: Johan Grimonprez

Original Music & Sample Collage: David Shea

Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War (1971)

Documentary, 1h 9m

In 1971, Koji Wakamatsu and Masao Adachi, both having ties to the Japanese Red Army, stopped in Palestine on their way home from the Cannes Film festival. There they caught up with JRA ex-pats Fusako Shigenobu and Mieko Toyama in training camps to create a newsreel-style agit-prop film based off of the "landscape theory" (fûkeiron) that Adachi and Wakamatsu had developed. The theory, most evident at work in A.K.A. Serial Killer (1969), aimed to move the emphasis of film from situations to landscapes as expression of political and economical power relations.

In 1974 Adachi left Japan and committed himself to the Palestinian Revolution and linked up with the Japan Red Army. His activities thereafter were not revealed until he was arrested and imprisoned in 1997 in Lebanon. In 2001 Adachi was extradited to Japan, and after two years of imprisonment, he was released and subsequently published Cinema/Revolution [Eiga/Kakumei], an auto-biographical account of his life.

Directors: Masao Adachi & Koji Wakamatsu

Featuring:

Rokihiro Toga

Aoi Nakajima

Fusako Shigenobu

Susumu Iwabuchi

Masao Matsuda

Masao Adachi

Leila Khaled

Ghassan Kanafani

The Forgotten (2012)

Drama, 22m

Driven from the Golan Heights some 45 years ago, old Mustafa seeks to return to the house he left behind. Guided by a tough young smuggler, he crosses the heavily fortified Israeli border, but his long journey is confounded by the onset of dementia. As a camaraderie between Mustafa and the smuggler takes root, ‘The Forgotten’ confronts us with a simple but deeply distressing question: How can you go home if you can’t remember where home is?

Writer & Director: Ehab Tarabieh

Starring: Shadi Ayoub & Tarik Kopty

Fertile Memory (1981)

Documentary, 1h 39m

Fertile Memory is the feature debut of pioneering director Michel Khleifi. Lyrically blending both documentary and narrative elements, Khleifi skillfully and lovingly crafts a portrait of two Palestinian women whose individual struggles both define and transcend the politics that have torn apart their homes and their lives.

“Both Sahar and Romia are trapped by the society in which they live, but they experience this stuckness differently. Sahar possesses the words, the other doesn’t. Romia exists, but without defining herself as an individual. Both are frustrated by history, the intellectual one perhaps doubly so for her awareness of this frustration, of the loneliness imposed on her by her situation as a divorcée.

Romia accepts her solitude after becoming a widow without bitterness, because she has decided that there is no other way. One character’s words corner those of the other, and I insisted on the film to work in that way, so that the viewer reacts to it, takes active part in the film, becomes an accomplice.”

— Michel Khleifi

Director: Michel Khleifi

Cinematographers: Marc-André Batigne & Yves van der Meer

Sound: Ricardo Castro

Editor: Moufida Tlatli

Featuring: Farah Hatoum & Sahar Khalifeh

Jaffa: Mother of the Stranger (2019)

Documentary, 1h 12m

Constructed through oral histories, Jaffa tells the story of the city from the perspective of those who lived there before their expulsion in 1948. They share their narratives and memories in order to describe life in Jaffa before the Nakba: details like the layout of neighbourhoods and roads, and the markets and cultural centres, as well as the citrus industry. Together, their accounts paint a picture of a vibrant city, stolen by colonization. Their testimony concludes with a heart wrenching account of the inhabitants’ decision to flee as violence engulfed their home.

Director: Raed Duzdar

Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (2001)

Documentary, 1h

Mona and Manar are two Palestinian girls growing up in refugee camps in Beirut and Bethlehem. Despite the overwhelming barriers that separate them, the girls form a close friendship through letters and a dramatic meeting at the Lebanese border. Shot during the liberation of southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation and at the beginning of the Palestinian intifada, frontiers of dreams and fears articulates the feelings, hopes, and growing activism of a generation of young Palestinians living in exile.

Director: Mai Masri

Producers: Mai Masri, Jean Khalil Chamoun

Music: Anouar Brahem

Cinematography: Jimmy Michel, Hussein Nassar

Featuring: Manar Faraj, Mona Zaaroura