Stern: The Man, the Gang, and the State

What is the future of the controversial relationship of Jews and Arabs in Israel and the West Bank? How do Israelis see the issues, perceive what is happening to their country and themselves, and view the media which brings them distressing news about the effects of an extended occupation? This film draws particularly on the testimony of Rafik Halabi, an Israeli Arab journalist who has covered this beat for Israel Television, and who is the only Arab working in the Hebrew section of Israeli TV news.

Beyond the Frontlines: Resistance and Resilience in Palestine

A thought-provoking documentary on the current and historical causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. political involvement.

October 7, 2023: Hamas terrorists attack Israel, murder and take hostages. Israel reacts with severity. The goal: the destruction of Hamas. But with the war in Gaza, Israel is awakening the great trauma of the Palestinians: the expulsion of 1948. How can the lack of empathy on both sides be explained?

Shot in Lebanon in 1975 just before the civil war. The director delivers a nuanced account of the complexities surrounding the Palestinian issue.

At the heart of European diplomacy

October 7, 2023 was one of the deadliest days of fighting ever in Israel, with around 1,200 people killed after Hamas launched its attack and 250 taken hostage – many of whom have either died in captivity or not yet released. The project features testimony from four victims and first responders, who witnessed the massacre and its aftermath: a farmer who helped rescue young people, a young survivor of the Nova music festival who took refuge in a shelter only to witness friends being murdered, an ultra-orthodox musician who volunteered to identify victims, and a mother whose son was kidnapped and taken to Gaza. A sentence uttered by the musician, who had seen 100 dead bodies in a single day, was the inspiration behind the title.

The inside story of the bitter clash between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Amid violence in the Middle East, the film traces Netanyahu's rise to power and his high-stakes fight with the president over Iran's nuclear program.

This deeply affecting documentary follows a small number of Israelis and Gazans through the most dramatic and tragic year of their lives. Using personal and previously unseen footage, it tells the story of the war in Gaza and the October 7 attacks through deeply emotional stories from both sides of the conflict. In Gaza, the film follows three individuals from reaction to the October 7th attacks to the start of the bombing by the Israeli military and to the loss of family members that all three suffer. In Israel, we witness footage of the Israeli characters, as they and their family members are attacked by Hamas on October 7th and then follow their stories through the year.

Sebastia, a small archaeological town, sits on top of a hill Northwest of Nablus, Palestine surrounded by Shavei Shomron, an illegal Israeli settlement and confiscated agricultural fields of olive groves and apricot trees. This ancient site was excavated multiple times over the last century by colonial archaeologists funded by Zionist individuals and institutions. The first excavation of 1908 led by Harvard University took advantage of Sebastia locals including women, men, and children as cheap labor digging their own land for the sake of biblical archaeology. Each excavation extracted soil and artifacts from the ground, taking what they considered valuable to their home institutions and leaving pottery shards and rubble on the surface. Today, what’s left of the archaeological monuments is contested by the nearby settlement as well as the Israeli military. The Roman Forum is a battlefield, but the locals are incredibly resilient.

Despite their children's reluctance, Radi and Mounira, a 65-year-old puppeteer couple, set off on tour between Israel and Palestine in their outdated van. They are exhausted from having to set up and take down the stage, from performing three shows in a row in front of hundreds of wild children under a burning sky. Lost in Jericho, frightened by the bombs falling near Majd Al Shams, destabilized by the Bedouin children of the Negev unable to determine their own identity, they no longer know if their mission is still relevant. Safeguarding the identity of their people through their shows, but at what cost? A quest for Palestinian identity.

A Hezbollah suicide bomber breaks silence to reveal the inner workings of the organization and his involvement in a narcotrafficking alliance with the FARC. Discover the hidden agendas between Iran, Latin American governments and organized crime.

Louis Theroux spends time with a small and very committed subculture of ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers. He discovers a group of people who consider it their religious and political obligation to populate some of the most sensitive areas of the West Bank, especially those with a spiritual significance dating back to the Bible. Throughout his journey, Louis gets close to the people most involved with driving the extreme end of the Jewish settler movement - finding them warm, friendly, humorous, and deeply troubling.

An inside look at the Palestinian intifada which began in late 1987. Filmed in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, this documentary reveals the horrors of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

Director Yigal Bursztyn’s made-for-TV road movie takes viewers on a contemporary journey in which he traces the gospel and teachings of Jewish philosopher, Maimonides (aka the Rambam). Burszstyn goes from the Spanish city of Cordoba to Fes in Morocco, then onwards to Egypt and finally, Israel. In the course of this physical, geographical journey, Bursztyn also does a deep dive into Maimonides’s 12th century canonical work, The Guide for the Perplexed, which he uses as a tool to interpret present-day events and the conflicts between faith and rationale, and between religion, culture, and gender.

What drives a young, well-educated Westerner to volunteer as a “peace activist” in the Middle East? Caiomhe Butterly is one of a growing number of volunteers who risk their own safety to intervene in the long-running and bloody conflict between Israel and Palestine. Several internationals, including her, have now been injured. Some have died. In this film, she describes witnessing the aftermath of the attack on Jenin in April 2002. The film follows her work, the main emphasis being “the accompaniment of communities at risk”. Despite being threatened, shot in the leg and deported later that year, she is determined to go back.

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”...

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.

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.

The Israeli filmmaker Shai Corneli Polak records the building of the 'security wall' through Palestinian territory at the village of Bil'in. The villagers protest mostly peacefully, while the Israeli army doesn't react peacefully. By now the Israeli High Court has ruled that the building of the wall was illegal.