Discoveries from Palestinian Territories World Cinema

An ironic and touching moment between a mother and son shot in this short film by Mahdi Baraghithi

Manipulated footage of one of the most iconic and moving Arab speeches of the 20th century: Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's resignation speech after his 1967 defeat.

Reflecting on the relationship between native plants and people, the film looks at the sumac plant (from staghorn sumac), which is native to parts of Turtle Island, as well as Tanner’s sumac, native to the eastern Mediterranean, which is a dire medicine, a powdered spice, a dye, and more. The film weaves together the voices of two women, one from the Mohawk community of Kahnawá:ke and the other an internally displaced refugee in Ramallah. Mimicking the progression of the plant’s flowers from yellow to green to red, the short film is a cyclical reflection on the connections between land, sustainability, and wild plants.

The story of a Palestinian family living in Jerusalem, as told through a cat and the everyday objects of the house they’ve kept in the family for over 73 years despite pressures to move.

A film documenting the life of the martyr Majed Abu Sharar, who was assassinated in Rome in 1981. The film discusses his childhood, upbringing, and his work leading up to joining the Palestinian Revolution and leading its Unified Media Office. The film contains interviews with Majed Abu Sharar, and testimonies of his friends and commrades.

A story of a Palestinian child from Tulkarm Camp for the Palestinian refugees. This child was born in one of the Israeli prisons. He spent more than two and a half years there. Then, he was separated from his mother who is still remaining arrested in prison till now by the Israeli Authority. The child starts an adventure of discovering the natural life under the protection of his father and family and the companions of the released prisoner mates of his mother, but he is still remaining very affected by the memories of his experience in prison.

In this film, 4 Palestinian revolutionary activists bear witness to their imprisonment in Israeli jails and their life after prison.

Taste The Revolution is a personal family story about two brothers who returned to Palestine after living in the US for 30 years to fulfill their father's dream of establishing a business. Together, the brothers invest their education, experience, knowledge and family money to open the first micro brewery in the entire Middle East right after Oslo agreement of the peace process between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Despite the hardship and constant obstacles of the unpredictable life in Palestine, Nadim and his brother Dahoud Khoury's success has given hope to others. Taybeh brewery has since become a central focus for the international media and has attracted many tourists and locals to trust the new taste of the revolution in making an excellent quality local product.

A Palestinian refugee visiting his ruined village is documented in an Israeli film. Amazingly, out of pure coincidence the same person is filmed again returning to his village in a different film, thirty years later. Will it be possible to film the return scene for the third time?

A Palestinian filmmaker is commissioned by an American organisation to make a documentary film, which is to depict Jerusalem as a city of peace and coexistence between Jews and Arabs. But while making the film, the filmmaker keeps running into situations that are very different from what he is trying to depict. The reality of things on the ground, proves to be much stronger than its representation.

Cinema Palestine features interviews with a wide range of film and media makers as well as excerpts from award-winning films to outline the emergence of the Palestinian narrative through film. Cinema Palestine also explores the implications of this important cinema on Palestinian national identity and the relationship between art, personal experience, and politics.

Eight brave individuals strive to expose the unjust mechanisms of control that the state of Israel uses to subjugate and silence Palestinians. In Israel, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank, the law is whatever Israel deems to be in the best interest of Jewish Israelis and to the detriment of Palestinians. Israel violates the civil and human rights of Palestinians as a matter of standard, accepted policy. However, there are brave, determined individuals who are trying to expose the destructive, unjust, and sometimes invisible ways in which Israel exploits and oppresses Palestinians. The Law and the Prophets explains the mechanisms of control that Israel deploys to subjugate Palestinians. These mechanisms, some violent and some nonviolent, have been perfected through decades of civil and military rule of Palestinians both within Israel, and in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

They communicate with each other and with the outside world using sign language, but they possess abilities and energies that sometimes exceed those of people who speak and hear. They are the segment of the deaf in the Gaza Strip.

Despite the harsh reality of occupation, a young couple from Ramallah find ways of crossing conventional boundaries and celebrate life even under the most dreadful conditions.

Hide Your Water from the Sun traces a 1920 study by physician and researcher Dr. Tawfiq Canaan into Palestinian customs and folklore. Canaan analyses 'haunted locations' that are primarily attributed to water sources and inhabited by various demons.

Rashid Marshawi takes us on a special journey across the historical city of Jaffa, where his father was forced to leave in the 1948 exodus. With his own voice, Marshawi narrates his memories of the city, bringing to life the waves on Jaffa’s shore, the sounds of its streets, and the sweetness of its inhabitants and its spirit. Recovery is a splendid cinematic experience that attempts to cloud the border between time and space as Marshawi takes us on a tour of magnificent photos from 1930 to 1948, allowing his nostalgia to breathe a new life into the static bodies portrayed.

The story of an Afghan boy who lost his family in the war in Afghanistan and gets involved in his past and future.

Khan-e-Tarikh (House of History), made in the winter of 1996. An essay film directed by Qadir Taheri. Script by Sher Mohammed Khara. Many cameramen from Afghan Film are credited for the film, as it made extensive use of source material from the civil war.

78 year old Fatma Hawari was a recently engaged young woman in 1948, when her village was bombed by Zionist forces during the Nakba. Found buried beneath the rubble with her lower body paralyzed, she sent her fiancé away and remained alone in a wheel chair, living in what became Israel. Every once in a while, she would take out the wedding dress she never wore. Then, over ten years ago, a man arrived in the village and asked for her forgiveness he was the pilot who had bombed her house. Unable to forgive, she sent him away, later to learn that he was Abe Nathan, better known as an Israeli peace activist. Years later, told by Israel that she is ineligible for war casualty compensation, as only “Arabs” could have caused her injuries, Fatma decides to trace Nathan, and ask him to confirm in writing that he had indeed bombed her home and family.

Directed by Mustafa Abu Ali.

After their father is taken during the ground invasion, two sisters are forced to cross a shattered landscape in search of safety. Raneem must guide her blind younger sister, Aseel, through a world of fear and uncertainty — becoming her eyes in a war no child should have to see.

This short film introduces the strain under which Palestinian farmers continue to live in the Jordan Valley. Water shortages prevent farmers from growing productive crops, while right next door the Israeli water company Mekorot pumps millions of gallons from the ground in order to supply water to illegal settlements. Palestinians have systematically been denied their right to dig wells or build water infrastruture since 1967, when the Israeli army completed its occupation of all of historic Palestine. No Palestinian has received a permit to build a water structure since 1967, and “illegal” water infrastructure is routinely demolished.

Palestinian suicide bombers are blowing themselves up in Jerusalem, killing dozens of Israeli citizens. Israel is retaliating by sealing up the West Bank.

Al Jazeera follows the exhumation of the Palestinian leader’s body from its resting place in Ramallah to Switzerland, where scientists found at least 18 times the normal levels of radioactive polonium in his remains.

Hospitals are supposed to be immune from attack in times of war but Israel has repeatedly bombed and shelled them since October 7, 2023. This film looks at Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s hospitals in the context of its historical expansion at the expense of the Palestinian population, going back to 1948. The Israeli army cut off water, power, fuel and medical supplies to Gaza and has attacked most of its hospitals. It claims that al-Shifa Hospital shielded a Hamas command centre and attacked it despite the hundreds of civilians sheltering there – but produced little evidence to support that claim. The alleged war crimes that the International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants for on both sides include Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilians, many of whom have taken shelter in Gaza’s hospitals.

A 17-year-old Palestinian is trapped by need amid Gaza’s starvation war. His dangerous attempt to fetch a sack of flour ends with a lone fifteen-month journey from north to south Gaza.

A woman novelist’s experience of displacement and collapse of civilization around her as she searches for a better life.

A personal project with a community impact that transforms individual memories of suffering into collective memory. The film depicts satirical and realistic scenes of Gaza’s public spaces, addressing deeply rooted social issues over the past fifteen years. Through digitisation and 3D modelling, it explores the city’s conceptual landscape under blockade and imagines how the current natural environment might appear.

Without dialogue, this film tells an ancient story – a wish you can only whisper to seashells before casting them into the ocean. That is how dreams may come true. But in Gaza, where the sea is closed to dreams, the Dream Collector appeared. He gathered seashells bearing wishes and hung them on his bedroom wall, where hidden hopes turned into paintings.

Sets in motion hundreds of photographs that capture the bodily movement of the Palestinian youth while protesting the Israeli military occupation forces during the 2015-2016 Uprising. It depicts the steps of stone slinging at the settle colonial army and merges individuals into the collective body of the Palestinian people.

This film is about a child living in a tent whose candle blows out in a gust of wind. He doesn’t like the dark, so he tries to think what to do. He puts a potato in an empty can and connects a wire. There is a spark, but it quickly goes out. Then he has a better plan. He gets a bicycle and connects the wire to the light. He starts to pedal fast and finally the tent lights up. He is happy! Gazan kids are ingenious!

This film tells the story of the heroic freedom of the six prisoners of Gilboa Prison, the story of the "great escape" of the six heroes of the "Freedom Tunnel" from prison, a victory for the prisoner movement. No dramatic scenes can do it justice, and this dramatic attempt of ours remains an approximation to the story of a heroic epic whose title is "victory."

Ahmad Natche's last, unfinished film premiered posthumously at Doclisboa. In "The Storyteller," we witness a rehearsal for a new play at the El Hakawati theater in Jerusalem. Ahmad Natche focuses on those watching and the empty seats of an audience yet to come, rather than on stage.

The war of 1948 changed the lives of Palestinians forever. My Palestine is the story of how they were living, what it was like to go to school there, what they played in the 'hara' or playgrounds. The story is told by the people who were born and grew up there before 1948. They then talk us through the war that forced them to leave their homes and lives forever. It commemorates the 70th anniversary of the Nakba and its impact on those who lived through it.

This film is a product of questions and comparisons that have matured in the director's imagination through his follow-up to the safety and quarantine regulations used in the world to reduce the number of infections, hence this film is a way to highlight the racist isolation measures that the Israeli occupation is practicing against the Palestinians, as if they were a virus that they supposed to kill and isolate away from the world. It’s named (COVID-1948) in order to draw the world's attention to our decades-old suffering.

In the night(mare) of Ramallah, in the fear of ending up in the hospital, through the icy dream of an inhuman hypermarket, Rico tumbles down to the final place where he is shot (by the camera). This short video-art collaboration between Yaqubi and French dancer-choreographer Jean Gaudin is evidence of a new standard and style of video art production being undertaken in the West Bank. Yaqubi places Gaudin's enigmatic character Rico in the heart of a Ramallah night, setting the dancer's staccato movements against a backdrop of the nocturnal city's hospitals, empty market, alleyways. Neither narrative nor entirely abstract, this is a mood piece in which Rico takes the audience on a surreal whirlwind tour of a city as close to sleep as it ever gets.

Samira Badran is a Palestinian artist living in Spain. in 2002 I was invited to participate in a conference in Barcelona where I met Samira and she invited me to her studio.

Occupation of Ramallah by Israeli troops in April 2002. The city of Ramallah, during the second - and not last - Israeli invasion in April 2002. "This movie shows what I saw, heard and felt first in the neighborhoods, and then the destruction in the city."

Documents the destruction caused by the 2002 Israeli attack on Jenin refugee camp in Palestine.

The film Weddings of Flowers, and the director Iyad Al-Daoud deals with the issue of Palestinian children, especially those who were martyred by the occupation bullets.

A nostalgic journey of reflection and rediscovery, where Mufeed revisits the abandoned cinema that was once full of life when he worked there forty years ago, reflecting on a lifetime spent bringing movies back to life.

Nahed Awwad recreates an intimate conversation that a girl had with her beloved while they were separated.

This short film chronicles the harrowing journey of Gazan travel vlogger Ahmad Ghunaim, unexpectedly thrust into the role of a war correspondent after October 7th and is a testament to survival against all odds and a stark, unflinching account of covering a genocide.

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?

We are taken behind the scenes of a play in-the-making: The play is Samuel Beckett’s WAITING FOR GODOT—starring a group of young 48-Palestinians. One by one, we are introduced to a variety of characters: the play’s director, actors, and other ordinary people. As we delve further into each of their lives, the film reveals the startling parallels between the themes of the play and their own. Everyone is waiting for something: a permit to build a house, better work conditions, a starring role in a film. Much like Waiting for Godot, our heroes are awaiting Faraj Allah… something that may or may not come.

A visual poetry collage reflecting the director's journey as a queer Arab immigrant, exploring identity, belonging, and the aftermath of the Beirut port explosion. Inspired by Omar J Saker’s poetry book ”The Lost Arabs,” it conveys the emotional struggles of a queer Arab artist.

The work attempts to create an imaginary archive of a group show that took place at Al-Hakawati theater hall in Jerusalem in 1985. In the absence of an institutionalized archive of Palestinian art, the video—like many other works by Abuarafeh—is based on immaterial references and oral storytelling such as witness interviews, workshops, and other shared activities in order to construct a narrative. Abuarafeh analyzes a photograph as well as the people who appear in it, all of them artists, trying to identify as many of them as possible. For this, she utilizes digital methods of cutting or separating foreground (people) and background (interior). Through focusing on the biography of one of the portrayed artists, the unwritten history of Palestinian art during this period is being traced and recounted.

The film reflects on past and current forms of dispossession and erasure in Palestine. From indigenous plants that resist uprooting, to ancient stones that resurface from colonial concrete, to sites where violent events and sparks of freedom occurred, to song lyrics about love and loss or traditional dances performed across the diaspora, the work rekindles the traces of alienated existences and transforms them into an intergenerational means for spiritual and bodily reconnection as much as for historical reconstruction.

This is a live performance shot by smartphones and was taken at Ben Gurion International Airport while on the way back from abroad. Thru the act the artist is collaborating with Oz Marinov and they try to pass through the border with a unique clothing.

A short documentary film of 16 minutes that presents the searching phase that the director of the film went through after her interrogation and arrest by the Israeli occupation forces in Jerusalem, that phase led her into seeing everything differently, her connection with her home and the streets changed, she felt like everything around her is pushing her to leave her own city Jerusalem, but after she left the city there was something that still drags her to it, this contradictory relationship with the place made always searching, she made this film as a mean for her search in her surrounding.

Marthame and Elizabeth Sanders lived in the Christian Palestinian village of Zababdeh from August, 2000, through December, 2003. Volunteers with the Presbyterian Church (USA), their ministry was one of ecumenical support to the Church in the land of its birth. The film documents the lives of nine Palestinian Christians living in the northern West Bank. This film grew out of a desire among their Palestinian neighbors to share their stories, and a desire among Christians in the West to hear them. The Sanders describe the project as "a labor of love, a response to the graciousness, warmth, hospitality, and welcome we received from our Palestinian neighbors and colleagues."

The lemon tree has become a symbol of Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation, much like the cactus and olive tree, embodying a politically charged image of national struggle. The ““Bukjeh”“, ““Kufiya,”” is the personal belongings bag carried by Nakba refugees. Carrying lemons inside the bag echoes the resilience of those who survived the Nakba, recalling the forced displacement journey in 1948 from Jerusalem to Ramallah.