The Tank and The Olive Tree recalls a certain number of forgotten fundamentals and sheds new light on the history of Palestine. By combining geopolitical analysis, interviews with international personalities who are experts on the subject and testimonies from Palestinian and French citizens, this documentary offers the keys to understanding what the media call the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Enough to rid people's minds of clichés and prejudices! If The Chariot and the Olivier is intended to be educational, it speaks above all of a magnificent territory, and of a people who constantly affirm that “to live is already to resist”...
A group of Israelis and Palestinians come together in Oslo for unsanctioned peace talks during the 1990s in order to bring peace to the Middle East.
In this video, the artist tries to overcome the effects of distance, and reflects on geography represented in exile due to war, and on the psychological distance represented in each one’s approach to her womanhood. The video beautifully weaves personal images and audio recordings of a very intimate nature, binding the personal with the political. Reading aloud from letters sent by her mother in Beirut, Hatoum creates a visual montage reflecting her feelings of separation and isolation from her Palestinian family. The personal and political are inextricably bound in a narrative that explores personal and family identity against a backdrop of traumatic social rupture, exile and displacement.
Follows a Palestinian leader who unites Fatah, Hamas and Israelis in an unarmed movement to save his village from destruction. Success eludes them until his 15-year-old daughter jumps into the fray.
A verité legal drama about Judge Kholoud Al-Faqih, the first woman appointed to a Shari'a court in the Middle East, whose career provides rare insights into both Islamic law and gendered justice.
In 2010 the Freedom Flotilla attempts to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. In international waters the flotilla is attacked by the Israeli army and 9 people are killed. 9 anonymous people. But the dead still have a name. In 2014 Gaza is attacked by Israel. 2131 Palestinians are killed, among them 513 children. 513 dead children. But the dead children still have names. The film is about a Jewish person who has made a political journey from the Vietnam war to Gaza. This person is the paediatrician Henry Ascher, who lost his fathers entire family in the Holocaust.
The documentary records the memories of a group of Palestinian elders, mainly veterans from the 1948 expulsions. Their stories of refugee struggles are interspersed with poems of Mahmoud Darwish.
Universities across the US are erupting with protests and encampments in support of Palestine. This is unlike anything humanity has in recent history. Why are students doing this? What's the big deal? And why now? The Journey Tellers team set out to answer these questions and more at the UC Berkeley Free Palestine Encampment, on the first day it was launched in the University of California, Berkeley.
Some 40 years after setting foot in Israel for the first time, journalist Pierre Nadeau felt the desire to return there to take stock of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In Iraq 2003 Corporal Martin Webster filmed fellow soldiers beating Iraqi youths during rioting in Al Amara. Two years later, a British newspaper obtained his footage. The story that ran led to outrage across the world.
So many Israelis still wax nostalgic about that old Friday afternoon ritual, back in the times when television had just one channel. Everyone would watch the Arab movie of the week, but did anybody ever wonder how Israel’s official TV station was able to transcend hostile boundaries to obtain these films, and why it insisted on showing movies made by “the enemy”? The Arabic-language movie from Egypt let some of us escape back to our original homeland, and let others peek out from our “villa in the jungle” and catch a glimpse of our neighbors across the border. But most of us didn’t really want to see the people whose culture, anguish, and aspirations were reflected on our screens. “Arab Movie” brings us the stars and the songs, the convoluted plots, and that fleeting moment when we shared the same cultural heroes as everyone else in the Middle East. But this film about the richness and intensity of Egyptian cinema also raises some disturbing questions.
An examination of Israel and its society after many months of war, seen initially through the prism of viral social media posts - and exclusive interviews with the soldiers behind them. These posts, some shared millions of times, show soldiers humiliating bound Palestinians, ransacking their homes, joking as they detonate schools and whole districts, and laughing as they launch high explosive ordnance into densely-packed areas. The award-winning team behind this Basement Films production traveled to Israel to interview some of these soldiers, who proudly defended themselves and their videos, some expressing callous disregard for Palestinians in Gaza. Through additional interviews with Israeli radical groups, politicians, and media figures, the film reveals Israeli Jewish society in the aftermath of October 7th, gripped by a vengeance and hate that puts into question any possibility for peace.
In an intricate web of alliances and enmities, can one's adversary's adversary truly become an ally? And yet, what if that adversary happens to be the most notorious anti-Semitic criminal in history?
A self-described liberal from cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, Zaki wanted to get behind the politics of Israel’s controversial settlements in the occupied territories — so she moved there, temporarily, setting up an improvised cafe where she could chat with settlers from her own generation.
Two sons from the beach refugee camp for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip decide to correspond with US President Barack Obama on his Facebook page. They ask him, as president of the United States, to intervene and lift the years-long blockade, inviting him and his wife to visit Gaza and watch the suffering of people there. But they don’t receive a response from him, deciding to use a small video camera to record a very angry video message addressed to Barack Obama from the campers
Lies and guilt are at the core of Patrick’s relationship with his mother Randa. Over the years, he has collected their audio messages and video calls, transforming them into a portrait of her life in Lebanon and his own in Belgium. This very intimate yet social piece reveals a complex relationship marked by the distance between the two characters and shows what one may experience as a homosexual migrant. By turns moving, provocative, and hilarious, Mea Culpa questions the links between national and sexual identities for a young Palestinian migrant.