The Changing Middle East

Explore an overlooked moment in pre-WWI Palestine when people's identities overlapped, and Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities intermingled freely. Few could contemplate the conflict that would engulf their region for the next century.

Forbidden to Wander chronicles the experiences of a 25-year-old Arab American woman traveling on her own in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the summer of 2002. The film is a reflection on the complexity of Palestinian existence and the torturously disturbing "ordinariness" of living under constant curfew. The film's title reflects this, as the Arabic words used to describe the imposed curfew "mane' tajawwul" literally translate as "forbidden to wander". The video is also the journey of personal discovery for the filmmaker, the wanderer who falls in love with a Palestinian man in Gaza.

Untold stories from the frontlines of the 'Deterring Aggression' battle. This documentary chronicles the ten decisive days preceding the operation, casting light on a political milestone that catalyzed the liberation of Syrian lands and signaled the dawn of a new era of hope.

In May 1974, the Israeli Air Force carried out an extermination operation against the Palestinian refugee camp Nabatiyeh. With this as a starting point, it is reviewed how the last 50 years of Zionist colonization of Palestine have partly led to the establishment of the state of Israel, partly to the expulsion of a people, the Palestinians, from their land. The film shows scenes of daily life in Palestinian refugee camps. We hear various of the inhabitants talk about their desire to return to their country, and we follow how the resistance movement works to free women from their traditional backward role. At the same time, the emergence of the armed resistance struggle is analysed, and the significance of the latest military technological developments for guerilla wars in the 3rd world is explained.

A few years ago, the al-Mahamids fled Bashar al-Assad and Syria to settle in Montreal. A nuanced portrayal of a courageous family coping with a seemingly interminable war, thousands of kilometres away, that continues to affect their lives.

On the verge of the election, the director Avi Mograbi aims to make a documentary on the most maligned Israeli politician, Arik Sharon. Against all his prediction, Mograbi discovers that Sharon is friendly and welcoming, completely different from the man who was thought to be...

Historian Tom Holland traces the origins of Isis’ barbaric and sadistic violence which it claims is justified by the tenets and scriptures of Islam.

AMIN portrays Qashqai musician Amin Aghaie, a young modern nomad and his family who despite facing steep financial, cultural and political obstacles are dedicated to their art and culture. Amin travels to remote towns and villages to record the music of the surviving masters whose numbers decline each year. His nomadic family are selling their meager belongings to help support their son's education in performance and ethnomusicology at Tchaikovsky's Conservatory in Kyiv, Ukraine, but it is not enough. Amin, desperate to finish his academic education, sells his violins one at a time just to pay for his tuition.

The key individuals of the Iraqi-Nazi connection.

"While I'm Away" is a first-year student animated short. This short is about the sense of not fully belonging to one place, and missing the other one when you are away. The guilt of moving abroad in the first place. Being the first generation to do this in your family. The constant self-reassurance that you aren’t doing anything wrong but still having no idea how to navigate all this. Re-birth. Alienation. Growth. Guilt. Renewal. Envy.

Iranian people’s water requirements are mostly depending on groundwater, though these sources are swiftly ending and the farmers are overusing millions of cubic meters of water annually. This documentary shows the tragedy of progressive depletion of groundwater resources in Iran in the past 50 years. While analyzing the water managements in past decades, we will see the environmental and social losses of such plunder, like land subsidence and migration of more than 11 million Iranians to suburbs of megacities.

As the U.S. planned to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in September 2021, Canadian-Afghan filmmaker and journalist Brishkay Ahmed was filming IN THE RUMBLING BELLY OF MOTHERLAND. Revealing the ongoing dangers for women reporters, and the extraordinary risks they take, this brave film provides an in-depth look into Zan TV, Kabul’s female-led news agency. A professional journalist herself, Ahmed documents both the harrowing and inspiring work of young, female journalists over the course of the two-year lead up to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Following parallel news stories as they unfold – two sets of national elections as well as ongoing U.S.-Taliban peace talks – the film reveals the daily hurdles Afghan female reporters and media staff face, underscoring the existential current events that threaten both Zan TV as a media outlet and the livelihoods of the women at its heart.

Divas: d’Oum Kalthoum à Dalida

This eye-opening documentary follows American basketball player Kevin Sheppard during his 2008-09 season playing for a professional team in Iran. Although Kevin is nervous, he makes many friends, including several politically active Iranian women.

In 1952 a young Egyptian colonel named Gamal Abdel Nasser led a coup that became a revolution, winning the support of millions of his countrymen. Over the next 18 years he challenged Western hegemony abroad, confronted Islamism at home, established the region’s first military authoritarian regime, and faced deep divisions among the Arabs.

Everything you've ever wanted to know about Saddam Hussein (but were afraid to ask).

Jim Al-Khalili travels through Syria, Iran, Tunisia and Spain to tell the story of the great leap in scientific knowledge that took place in the Islamic world between the 8th and 14th centuries.

What is the reality of daily life in Gaza, along the border of Israel? Can the religious organization of Hamas, rivals to the PLO, move from international pariah to meaningful political player with citizens' interests at heart? Developed over two years and with unprecedented access to this 'terrorist' organization, this documentary uncovers the deeper issues defining life in Gaza under Hamas.

Cuisine libanaise : Chiche ou pois chiche ?

A group of young UN soldiers in Lebanon enters service with pro-Israeli views and a naive outlook on war. They go through a radical change of heart as they witness and film the Qana massacre. They secure video evidence indicating that Israel deliberately bombed a UN camp killing 106 refugees.