In Breaking Bread, exotic cuisine and a side of politics are on the menu. Dr. Nof Atamna-Ismaeel - the first Muslim Arab to win Israel's MasterChef - is on a quest to make a social change through food. And so, she founded the A-sham Arabic Food Festival in Haifa. There, pairs of Arab and Jewish chefs collaborate on mouthwatering dishes like kishek (a Syrian yogurt soup), and qatayef (a dessert typically served during Ramadan), as we savor the taste of hope and discover the food of their region free from political and religious boundaries.
MOURNING IN LOD, takes a microcosmic look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through Musa, Yigal, and Randa — three people whose fates become inextricably linked in a vicious cycle of violence. Lod/Lydd is a “mixed” city inhabited by Arabs and Jews who live side by side in a strained coexistence. In May 2021, two of these three people lost their lives and and one regained hers — thanks to an unlikely organ transplant. The outpouring of love, anger, forgiveness and sorrow that follows in their wake is a ray of light that offsets a collective state of mourning with no end in sight.
Never-before-heard eyewitness accounts from released hostages, survivors, and first responders during the October 7 attacks on Israeli towns and at the Nova Music Festival show the disgusting extent of the crimes of so-called Palestinian freedom fighters. Women and girls were raped, assaulted, and mutilated by members of the Hamas terrorist group and murderous Palestinians from the Gaza Strip who joined this mob. Released hostages have revealed that Israeli captives in Gaza have also been sexually assaulted. Despite the indisputable evidence, these atrocities have received little scrutiny from human rights groups and international organizations. Many leading figures in politics, academia, and media have attempted to minimize or even deny that they occurred. In this documentary, Sheryl Sandberg conducts in-depth interviews with witnesses and survivors of the events that reveal the full sad extent of the Hamas massacre.
A film documenting the story of the Israeli refusnik-movement and interviews some of its protagonists. This timely documentary interweaves the stories of six soldiers who, after years of loyal reserve duty and annual active combat, find they can no longer countenance serving in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They become "refusniks" - an action that puts them at odds with deeply held national values and has devastating consequences in their own lives. In the film, six of the signers of the original "Combatants’ Letter" reveal the untenable combat experiences that led to their decision, the public outcry it provoked and the price they continue to pay for refusing to serve - including isolation, family ostracism and imprisonment. Winner, Ecumenical Jury Prize, Berlin Film Festival
Najwa, Nawal, and Siham, three Palestinian widows, live with their 11 children in a house on Shuhada Street in Hebron. Their house lies on the border; the façade is under Israeli occupation, the Palestinian Authority controls the back. At the entrance to the house is a military post; on the roof the Israeli army has placed a watch point over Palestinian Hebron. The three women, trapped in the middle and constantly surrounded by Israeli soldiers, carry on their difficult lives in a perverse situation: the occupation becomes a routine, the absurd becomes a given. This is the story of an occupation that extends to the staircase and the roof of the house, where it encounters poverty, loneliness, pain, but also the small joys of everyday life. This is an internal prison, the external one is the ongoing occupation.
A documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has lasted for more than 50 years. Contains some interviews with the children in this conflict.
The film returns to the origins of the creation of the State of Israel (from 1896 to 1948) and highlights the responsibility of the Western World.
A thought-provoking documentary on the current and historical causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. political involvement.
Isobel Yeung and a team of BBC Investigative journalists navigate gun battles, combat raids and secretive meetings as they conduct an investigation deep inside the occupied West Bank. What they find raises serious questions about the conduct of the Israeli Military and uncovers a dangerous situation that is on the brink of exploding.
In July 1987, Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al Ali was shot by an unknown assassin. This documentary traces his life and work from his birth in Galilee to his death in London. It examines the forces that shaped Naj Al Ali as an artist and as a human being and shows how his experiences mirrored those of other exiled Palestinians.
An Israeli film director interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to reconstruct his own memories of his term of service in that conflict.
In Killing Gaza, independent journalists Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen documented Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza. Yet this film is much more than a documentary about Palestinian resilience and suffering. It is a chilling visual document of war crimes committed by the Israeli military, featuring direct testimony and evidence from the survivors.
Edward Said, Professor of English & Comparative Literature at Columbia University, was a prominent literary critic of the late 20th century and a leading spokesperson for the Palestinian cause in the US. Born to a Palestinian family in Al-Quds (Jerusalem) in 1935, he and his family were dispossessed in 1948 and settled in Cairo. Educated in the US, he lived in New York for many years. Said was a member of the Palestine National Council. After resigning from the PNC in 1991, Said wrote critically about the post-Oslo peace process, the political failures of Yasser Arafat and the PLO. Said was diagnosed with leukemia in 1991 and struggled with the disease while continuing to write and teach. He stopped giving interviews but made an exception less than a year before his death in 2003, speaking about his illness, work, Palestine, politics, life, and education. The last interview is the final testament of this passionately committed intellectual.
"There can only be an unhappy ending to this", people say when they hear about Palestinian Osama and his Israeli wife Jasmin’s love. Their home countries separate them through racist laws and lack of security. They choose exile, but soon rosy dreams turn into despair in an inhospitable Europe. Will their love survive?
As Israel’s bombing campaign continues in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis deepens to catastrophic levels, the Biden administration has not wavered in its support for Israel. From air strikes to field executions, Fault Lines investigates the killings of civilians by the Israeli military in Gaza and the role of the United States in the war.
Filmed between 1973 and 1975, L’Olivier was produced by the Vincennes Cinema Group. This activist collective of teachers and filmmakers, formed on the occasion of this film, attempts to explain the Palestinian problem through interviews. The Olivier was one of the first films to attempt to give substance to what was still largely ignored in the West: the existence of the Palestinian people and their fight to recover their rights. L'Olivier responds to a concern: the already weak support of French public opinion for the Palestinian cause diminished following the Munich operation of 1972. Structured in such a way as to tell the Palestinian story and explain the state of the struggle at the time, the film appeals to global militant solidarity and, in particular, to European political commitments.
Follows the repercussions of the Israeli Security Wall and Settlement expansion in the engulfed/annexed Palestinian farming communities of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, examining the grassroots resistance movement that sprang up against it. An interminable road trip across hard and liquid borders, across a terrain that is being erased as it is being traversed.
Edward Said, Professor of English & Comparative Literature at Columbia University, was one of the most prominent literary critics of the late 20th century and a leading spokesperson for the Palestinian cause in the US. In this episode, Said examines Western attitudes to the Arabs and finds their origins in the Crusades, Hollywood and European empire building. He sees the Palestinian fate as the result of years of Western interference. One of the ten episodes of The Arabs: A Living History.
Documentarians Justine Shapiro and B.Z. Goldberg traveled to Israel to interview Palestinian and Israeli kids ages 11 to 13, assembling their views on living in a society afflicted with violence, separatism and religious and political extremism. This 2002 Oscar nominee for Best Feature Documentary culminates in an astonishing day in which two Israeli children meet Palestinian youngsters at a refugee camp.
A detailed investigation into the political and economic interests that, since the beginning of the 20th century, have pulled the strings of the arms trade, hidden in the shadows, feeding the shameful corruption of politicians and government officials and promoting a state of permanent war throughout the world, while they cynically asked for a lasting and universal peace.