Palestinian Cinema

2021 film by Darin J. Sallam

On his wedding anniversary, Yusef and his young daughter set out in the West Bank to buy his wife a gift. Between soldiers, segregated roads and checkpoints, how easy would it be to go shopping?

One day, as he is bird-hunting, he becomes the hero of a modern-day tale: Yussef falls in love with Aida, a young gypsy girl. To marry her, he must first find the three jewels missing from a family necklace brought from South America by the girl’s grandfather.

The drama, the story of three childhood friends and a young woman who are torn apart in their fight for freedom, is billed as the first fully-financed film to come out of the Palestinian cinema industry.

An examination of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 through to the present day. A semi-biographic film, in four chapters, about a family spanning from 1948 until recent times. Combined with intimate memories of each member, the film attempts to portray the daily life of those Palestinians who remained in their land and were labelled "Israeli-Arabs," living as a minority in their own homeland.

Born in Brooklyn to Palestinian refugee parents, Soraya (Suheir Hammad) decides to journey to the country of her ancestry when she discovers that her grandfather's savings have been frozen in a Jaffa bank account since his 1948 exile. However, she soon finds that her simple plan is a complicated undertaking — one that takes her further from her comfort zone than she'd imagined.

Chronicle of a Disappearance unfolds in a series of seemingly unconnected cinematic tableaux, each of them focused on incidents or characters which seldom reappear later in the film. Among the many unrelated scenes, there is a Palestinian actress struggling to find an apartment in West Jerusalem, the owner of the Holy Land souvenir shop preparing merchandise for incoming Japanese tourists, a group of old women gossiping about their relatives, and an Israeli police van which screeches to a halt so several heavily armed soldiers can get off the car and urinate.

From the very first day of Israel-Gaza conflict in 2014, filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly has been there with his camera. He follows a team of paramedics in an ambulance, eventually becoming a core member who bears witness to their perilous and heartbreaking rescue work. Ambulance tracks the harrowing chaos amidst a state-run military operation on civilians.

Five broken cameras – and each one has a powerful tale to tell. Embedded in the bullet-ridden remains of digital technology is the story of Emad Burnat, a farmer from the Palestinian village of Bil’in, which famously chose nonviolent resistance when the Israeli army encroached upon its land to make room for Jewish colonists. Emad buys his first camera in 2005 to document the birth of his fourth son, Gibreel. Over the course of the film, he becomes the peaceful archivist of an escalating struggle as olive trees are bulldozed, lives are lost, and a wall is built to segregate burgeoning Israeli settlements.

A rare film by the legendary filmmaker Mustafa Abu Ali, one of the founders of the Palestine Film Unit, the first filmic arm of the Palestinian revolution. Shot by a French news team, the footage was edited by Mustafa in Lebanon to produce one of the earliest films on the occupied territory in Gaza. Scenes of the Occupation from Gaza employs experimental editing tech- niques to produce a cinematically and politically subversive film. The film won the prize as best film at the Damascus Film Festival in 1973 and was screened at multiple festivals. It was the only film produced by the Palestine Cinema Group, which in 1974 became the Palestine Cinema Institute.

Mustafa and his wife Salwa come from two Palestinian villages that are only 200 meters apart, but separated by the wall. Their unusual living situation is starting to affect their otherwise happy marriage, but the couple does what they can to make it work. Every night, Mustafa flashes a light from his balcony to wish his children on the other side a goodnight, and they signal him back. One day Mustafa gets a call that every parent dreads: his son has been in an accident. He rushes to the checkpoint where he must agonisingly wait in line only to find out there is a problem with his fingerprints and is denied entry. Desperate, Mustafa resorts to hiring a smuggler to bring him across. His once 200-meter journey becomes a 200-kilometer odyssey joined by other travellers determined to cross.

An homage to the Gaza Strip, Ouroboros follows a man through five different landscapes, upending mass-mediated representation of trauma. A journey outside of time, marking the end as the beginning, exploring the subject of the eternal return and how we move forward when all is lost.

Those were the days when girls were prettier, when eyes were in all colours, without any colour. What's Different now - the camera, or the eyes?" asks Abdel Salam Shehadah's poetic and mesmerizing homage to the studio photographers of the 1950's - 70's. Set partly in a refugee camp in Rafah, this is a remarkable look back at fifty years of Palestinian and Arab history, through photographs, reportage and the voices of these photographers today.

1984 film by PeÅ Holmquist

This documentary focuses on the devastating violence of the Israel-Palestine conflict and its effects on the children of Gaza.

In the rural outskirts of Gaza City a small community of farmers, the Samouni extended family, is about to celebrate a wedding. It's going to be the first celebration since the latest war. Amal, Fuad, their brothers and cousins have lost their parents, their houses and their olive trees. The neighborhood where they live is being rebuilt. As they replant trees and plow fields, they face their most difficult task: piecing together their own memory. Through these young survivors' recollections, Samouni Road conveys a deep, multifaceted portrait of a family before, during and after the tragic event that changed its life forever.

2019 documentary film about parkour athletes in the Gaza Strip

Two students in the West Bank are forced to return home to Gaza, where their love defies tradition. To reach his lover, Qays graffitis poetry across town. A modern retelling of the famous ancient Sufi parable Majnun Layla.

Two childhood friends are recruited for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.