Arna Mer Khamis was a legendary Israeli activist against the occupation. A Jew who married a Palestinian, she spent her life campaigning for human rights. In the Jenin refugee camp, Arna opened a theatre where, with her son Juliano, she taught children to express themselves through art. When Arna died of cancer in 1995, the theatre did not survive. Five years later Juliano, one of the region's leading actors, returns to discover what happened to 'Arna's children'. Shifting in time, his film juxtaposes the young boys with the militants and martyrs they become, exposing the horror of young lives trapped by the circumstances of the Israeli occupation. Voted best documentary feature at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival, and best first documentary feature at the 2004 Canadian International Documentary Festival.

 

 

 

From 16-18 September 1982, for two nights and three days, the killers of the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps went about their crimes. The massacre deeply shook the public throughout the world, but today has been almost forgotten, although unanswered questions still surface: what drives people to such excesses of brutality, and how are the perpetrators able to live on? 

 

Massaker is a psycho-political study of six perpetrators who participated in the Sabra and Shatila massacres, on orders and their own personal initiative. The film intertwines the mental dispositions of the killers with their political environment, and broaches the phenomenon of collective violence through their accounts. Winner of the Fipresci Award, Berlin 2005.

 

 

 

The outcome of a youth storytelling project under the auspices of the Al Jana Resource Centre in Lebanon, this short film tells the story of three brothers and their endeavour to make the most of their school break by selling lemonade. The writing, casting and editing were all executed with the participation of young residents of the Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut. Winner of the Gold Prize at the 2004 Cairo International Film Festival for Children.

 

 

 

Before leaving Palestine to settle abroad, Director Ahmad Mashrawi accepts one last job: he must audition actors for the new National Palestinian Theatre. On the road with interviewer Bissan and her cameraman Lumière, he search of talent in the numerous refugee camps of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. He guides the auditioning actors into dramatising what best embodies their destiny: waiting. Rashid Mashrawi's film is at times comic, at times tragic. In the camps, the crew encounters idiosyncratic performers and characters, but also a unifying theme of suspension, homelessness and yearning. Winner of the Grand Prix (Licorne d'Or) at 25th Amiens International Film Festival, 2005, and Best Film at the 2005 Med-Film Festival in Italy.

 

 

 

This directorial debut from Quentin Tarantino cameraman Ziad Doueiri, West Beirut is a semi-autobiographical account of his childhood in Lebanon during the civil war. The film features superb performances from a young cast whose characters explore war-ravaged Beirut with their Super 8 camera, bearing witness to the increasingly brutal war from a youthful, naive and exuberant perspective. "During the first years of the civil war, despite the anxiety that I could sense in my parents, I was incapable of feeling it myself," Doueiri says. "I wasn't born with fear, I acquired it." His beautifully shot film offers an account of the process by which excitement and freedom was turned into fear and exile. Winner of the Fipresci Award at the 1998 Toronto International Film Festival, and Best First Film Award at the 1998 Carthage Film Festival.

 

 

Initially banned by the Israeli Film Board and still a source of controversy, Mohammed Bakri's documentary bears witness to the aftermath of the April 2002 Israeli re-occupation and partial demolition of the Jenin refugee camp. The documentary hears survivors presenting their own testimony, and presents an often harrowing portrayal of a Palestinian community responding to trauma. Voted best film at the 2002 Carthage International Film Festival.

 

 

 

Based on a true story, Private offers an intensely intimate view of events as they unfold for a middle-class Palestinian family whose home is invaded and occupied by Israeli troops. Refusing to abandon their home, the father, a well-educated teacher, is faced with a struggle to retain his dignity, and the support of his family as it is subjected to increasing levels of stress. Featuring an award-winning performance by leading actor Mohammed Bakri, the film's claustrophobic set and edgy camera work combine to make it at once deeply unsettling and profoundly moving. Winner of the Fipresci Award at the 2005 San Francisco International Film Festival, the Golden Leopard Award at the 2004 Locarno Film Festival, and Best Actor (Bakri) at the 2005 Buenos Aires International Film Festival.

 

 

 

Iraqi Swiss filmmaker Samir takes on stereotypical and historically novel distinctions between Jews and Arabs in this deeply thoughtful film about Iraqi-Jewish communists who left Iraq for Israel in the 1950s. Drawing on insightful interviews with academics (including Ella Shohat), novelists (Sami Michael and Samir Naqqash) and other Iraqi-Israeli Jewish Arabs, as well as archival research and footage, the film explores a fascinating set of political, cultural, religious, national and linguistic tensions linked to the emergence of new and potentially exclusive ways of identifying as Jewish or Arab. In so doing, the film confronts central issues of identity at the heart of national and ethnic conflict. Winner of the 2002 Zurich Film Prize, and the 2002 Locarno Critics Week Prize.