Rafah is located in the southern Gaza Strip. It’s a city cut in two by the Philadelphia Road, a security corridor between Sinai and Gaza. It’s destiny changed during the night of 12 September 2005, when the Israeli army withdrew from the Gaza Strip. The Israelis evacuated the Philadelphia Road and the colonies surrounding the city disappeared. But Rafah would never emerge from its chaos. Rafah is the hub of arms trafficking between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Since the Israeli withdrawal, these arms have contributed to the bloody wars between families. After the Hamas victory at the legislative elections, the city sank into a major economic crisis. On 25 June, 2006, Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit was abducted by Palestinian militants using a tunnel dug from Rafah. In reprisal, Tsahal shelled the houses of arms dealers located along the Philadelphia Road. By 12 September, 2006, a year after the withdrawal, all hopes of rebirth had died.
This documentary, filmed after October 7, places recent events in context and retraces the extraordinary history of this region to shed light on the present, interviewing actors and witnesses to this conflict: Islamists, Jewish nationalists, imams, rabbis, intellectuals, urban planners, soldiers, etc.
Haunted by the killing by Israeli police of a Palestinian friend from his youth, an Israeli queer filmmaker embarks on a cinematic dialogue across time — confronting memory, friendship, and the genocide unfolding today. In this intimate cinematic letter, Israeli filmmaker Roy Cohen addresses his Palestinian friend and fellow peace activist Aseel Aslih, who was murdered by Israeli police in their youth. Cohen tells Aslih of his experiences navigating a growingly genocidal society and seeks Aslih’s moral clarity and resilience in the evocative letters he had written as a teenager.
After two intifadas and the construction of the Israeli wall, the only Palestinian zoo is still there and is now seeking for international recognition and to replace their lost giraffes.
Vacances en Palestine
In 2021, the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood was attacked. The war lasted for 11 days, during which all forms of weapons were used. This left many victims, along with a great loss of buildings and infrastructure. But, maybe more importantly, it created deep psychological effects on all who lived through it, many of them children
Samer lives in Ramallah in the West Bank. His family lives in Gaza, one hour away. They have not seen each other for six years. When Mustafa went for a visit to Gaza in 2006, he was 18 years old. He was never allowed to return – his mother Hekmat has been fighting to see him again for seven years now. Two families torn apart. They share the same “crime”: being registered with a Gaza address in their Identity Cards. Under Israeli rule, they are considered “infiltrators” in their own country. Their lives have turned into a permanent struggle. Parents can only talk to their sons on the phone; sisters can only see their brothers on the internet – mothers and their children fighting to be together at last…
In the shadow of the First World War, the genocide of the Christian Assyrians took place almost unnoticed by the world public. This first systematic genocide of the 20th century was committed by the Young Turks (Ottoman Empire) and would not have been possible without the support of some Kurdish local rulers and their family clans. The Assyrians are the indigenous people of Mesopotamia and have lived in Mesopotamia for thousands of years. The film includes testimony from several European, Turkish and Assyrian historians, as well as genocide researchers, including Professor Taner Akcam, Dr. Gabriele Yonan and Professor David Gaunt. The film includes testimony from survivors of the genocide. Various journalists and publicists also have their say with well-researched information in this documentary. The Assyrians refer to the Genocide as "Seyfo" (ܣܝܦܐ), which translates as "sword".
This film made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective shows the destruction of the occupied West Bank's Masafer Yatta by Israeli soldiers and the alliance which develops between the Palestinian activist Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval.
The film explores the first Palestinian Intifada against the Israeli Occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It shows moving images of resistance against the Israeli occupation, while exploring the steadfast determination of the Palestinian People, confronting a modern army with stones. The film highlights the active and important role of women in the intifada.
Found-footage short film about the paths connecting our global lives. Also, a plea against genocide.
Documentary about war photographer James Nachtwey, considered by many the greatest war photographer ever.
While serving with the African Union, former Marine Capt. Brian Steidle documents the brutal ethnic cleansing occuring in Darfur. Determined that the Western public should know about the atrocities he is witnessing, Steidle contacts New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof, who publishes some of Steidle's photographic evidence.
Television was invented as a result of scientific and technical research. Its power as a medium of news and entertainment altered all preceding media of news and entertainment
A documentary chronicling the adolescent years of Elie Wiesel and the history of his sufferings. Eliezer was fifteen when Fascism brutally altered his life forever. Fifty years later, he returns to Sighetu Marmatiei, the town where he was born, to walk the painful road of remembrance - but is it possible to speak of the unspeakable? Or does Auschwitz lie beyond the capacity of any human language - the place where words and stories run out?
The film "Searching for Freedom: The Holy Land Foundation" is a two part documentary focussing on the story of the Holy Land Foundation, established in the late 80s by three Americans from Palestinian origin, Shukri Abu Baker, Ghassan Elashi and Mohammad El-Mezain. The foundation aimed to supply humanitarian aid to the Palestinians in Palestine and countries hosting Palestinian refugees, it later became the largest charity association in the US to distribute humanitarian aid to Palestinians. After 9/11, the former US President George W. Bush issued a decision to shut down the Holy Land Foundation and freeze its assets. In 2007 the Holy Land Foundation trials began, where five of its members were charged with funding terrorism and sending money to Hamas, a blacklisted political group in the US. A second trial for the Holy Land Foundation members took place in 2008, which issued the convictions of five members of the Foundation and their sentencing of 65 years imprisonment.
An Indonesian man with a communist background named Ramli was brutally murdered when the "Communist" purge occurred in 1965. His remaining family members lived in fear and silence until the making of this documentary. Adi, a brother of his, decided to revisit the horrific incident and visited the men who were responsible for the killings and one survivor of the purge. These meetings uncovered sadistic details of the murders and exposed raw emotions and reactions of the killers' family members about what happened in the past - much to Adi's disappointment.
A Palestinian activist's fight for freedom draws a Japanese American filmmaker into confrontation with detention regimes of past and present.
My mother always refused to speak about her childhood during the Cambodian genocide. Upset by her silence, my brother and I decide to follow Antoine, a grandson of Armenian genocide survivors, photographing the ghosts of his ancestors in the Middle East.
Though both the historical and modern-day persecution of Armenians and other Christians is relatively uncovered in the mainstream media and not on the radar of many average Americans, it is a subject that has gotten far more attention in recent years.