Mohammad Bakri

All That’s Left of You

After a Palestinian teen confronts Israeli soldiers at a West Bank protest, his mother recounts the series of events that led him to that fateful moment, starting with his grandfather’s forced displacement.

Upshot

Suleiman and Mona are a couple who lead a solitary life in which they care for animals and trees and have constant heated discussions about their children’s life choices. However, one day, their routine is disturbed when a stranger shows around, calling to mind a painful past.

Cairo Conspiracy

A fisherman's son is offered the ultimate privilege to study at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the epicenter of power of Sunni Islam. Shortly after his arrival, the university’s highest ranking religious leader, the Grand Imam, dies and the young student becomes a pawn in a ruthless power struggle between Egypt's religious and political elite.

The Stranger

In a small village in the occupied Golan Heights, the life of a desperate unlicensed doctor, who is going through an existential crisis, takes another unlucky turn when he encounters a man wounded in the war in Syria. Overturning all community expectations in times of war and national crisis, he ventures forth to meet his newly found destiny.

Strange Cities Are Familiar

A political refugee living in London tries to get back to his home in Palestine to see his dying son.

The Tower

Eleven-year-old Wardi’s great-grandfather leaves behind a will suggesting looking to the past to find the future. Searching the house, Wardi finds out about her Palestinian homeland from family memories.

In His Place

A complicated and nonliteral Jewish film about feelings the name for which has not yet been invented. A friend of the family in which the wife died in labour loved her more than life itself, although he will never say it out loud. He gladly agrees to babysit the child for a day and brings her home, where he is suddenly faced with resentment from his relatives. This multifigured film with beautiful unspoken truths talks about widowhood of other people and oneself, about others’ children who can be dearer than the yet unborn children of one’s own, and about love that does not follow the loved one into the grave.

American Assassin

Following the murder of his fiancée, Mitch Rapp trains under the instruction of Cold War veteran Stan Hurley. The pair then is enlisted to investigate a wave of apparently random attacks on military and civilian targets.

Wajib

After years abroad in Italy, Shadi returns to his native Nazareth. But this is no spectacular homecoming. He's back somewhat begrudgingly to honour his "wajib" (or duty) to hand out invitations to his sister's wedding with his father. The simmering tension between the two — who are often stuck in a car, more often than not in traffic — builds, exposing the sometimes-comic chasms that exist between men who live in different worlds but share an unshakable bond.

Inertia

Mira Segal wakes up screaming one morning to discover that her husband has disappeared. The police open a Missing Person file and advise her to wait. As weeks turn into months, Mira continues to search for him while exploring her own desires and the guilt of not wanting him back.

The Warren

A dramatization of raid to capture a suspected militant by the Israeli Defense Forces during the Second Intifada into the sprawling maze of the Balata Refugee Camp in Palestine.

Blackness

In times of war, a man wants to save his six children from starvation.

Giraffada

Yacine is the veterinarian of the only zoo remaining in the Palestinian West Bank. He lives alone with his 10-year old son, Ziad. The kid has a special bond with the two giraffes in the zoo. He seems to be the only one to communicate with them. After an air raid in the region the male giraffe dies. His mate, Rita, won’t survive unless the veterinarian finds her a new companion. The only zoo that might provide this animal is located in Tel Aviv ...

The Savior

It is a time when Rome rules the world with the power of life and death in their hands. The province of Roman Palestine is a bubbling cauldron of rebellion and control. And on this greater canvas Luke, narrates a story of wonder, amazement and impact... The world is anticipating this moment in history but no one can imagine God touching His creation in the form of a little baby named Jesus. Much is recorded in the Gospels about Jesus' miraculous birth, to a young virgin named Mary, in Bethlehem, but little is known about his quiet growing up in Nazareth. Joseph, his adopted father, seems to have died well before Jesus turns 30 and begins his ministry.

Wild Horses

Shadi lives in a horse-farm with his disabled and strict father, and with his beloved aging horse, Rosa. The status-quo of their daily farm life is broken when Noa arrives at the farm with her mother for the weekend, and Shadi discovers his father's intentions to kill Rosa.

Water

Ten directors, Israeli and Palestinian embarked on a journey to create short films, fiction or documentary, inspired by water.

The Salt Fisherman

A fisherman lives alone. His days and nights are fraught with waiting. He rises with the sun and carries his anxieties and tools to the sea, where he fishes. He fishes until sunset without ever catching a fish. One day, he meets a passerby on the sea playing a mouth harmonica. The man feels compassion for him and tells him that he is fishing in a sea without fish, in a sea that is dead, but the fisherman does not even look at him.

The Flowers of Kirkuk

Cruel politics and intensive love. Najla (N) has just finished her medical studies in Rome. Sherko (S) conceals sick and injured partisans. Mokhtar (M) belongs to the dictator's police. S and M love N, N loves S. When she gets a letter from S that she must forget him, she returns to Kirkuk. As a doctor she can help S. Mokhtar follows her trail and S and N are arrested. S is tortured. N is beaten up and then offered the job as a police doctor, a reward for leading the police to S. She accepts because then she can collect and pass on the names of people murdered or tortured. She will attend many mass murders of women and children. Once she can save them by fabricating that a child has cholera, with greater risk of contamination if she is dead. – When M understands that he cannot win N's love, he smuggles both N and S out of the country. Fully aware of the consequences he distracts the border guards and is shot by them. Max Scharnberg, Stockholm, Sweden

Sense of Morning

A man living in 1982 Beirut listens to the bombs fall and reminisces about the smell of coffee.

Weddings and Other Disasters

Romantically disillusioned woman finds herself organising her sister's wedding. Cue romantic mismatching and shenanigans...

Zindeeq

Acclaimed director Michel Khleifi's story of a Palestinian film-maker 'M' living in Europe, who returns home to Ramallah to film witness accounts of the 1948 Nakba - not only explores the events of that tumultuous era, but places them in context with the uncertainty and tension of present-day Palestine. Over the course of a single day and night, M's solipsistic existence is shaken when his nephew kills a man in Nazareth, placing the entire family at risk of reprisals. This masterful feature - a quietly witty, complex and occasionally surreal depiction of an exile's relationship with Palestine - marks a new direction in Khleifi's work.

Laila's Birthday

As Abu Laila is forced to leave his job as a judge and become a cab driver, he faces a hectic challenge when he's told by his wife to bring a gift and a cake for their daughter's seventh birthday, which proves to be a task more complicated than he expected.

The Lark Farm

The Lark Farm is set in a small Turkish town in 1915. It deals with the genocide of Armenians, looking closely at the fortunes, or rather, misfortunes of one wealthy Armenian family.

Nuzhat al-Fuad

Odelia, a talented screenwriter, and her father,a well-known author, have a bond that is both complicated and demanding. The agonies of writing make it difficult for Odelia to bridge the gap between the buzz of creation and the the depths of despair, and the frustration affects her romantic relationship.

Private

A Palestinian family is trapped inside a house commandeered by Israeli soldiers.

The Olive Harvest

Upon his release from an Israeli prison, Mazen begins to fall in love with Raeda, his friend since childhood who is already engaged to Taher, Mazen's younger brother.

In Search of Peace

In Search of Peace: 1948-1967 chronicles Israel's first two decades, offering new insights on the origins of the Middle East conflict. Combining a rich tapestry of rare archival film and photos, the film offers a unique global perspective on one of the seminal events in the 3,500-year history of the Jewish people. Featuring the voices of Edward Asner, Anne Bancroft, Richard Dreyfuss, Miriam Margolyes and Michael York. "An unabashedly emotional and stirring inspirational history of Israel..."

Desperado Square

In ha-Argazim, a neighborhood that time forgot, the one-year anniversary of Morris Mandabon's death is approaching, and his youngest son, Nissim has had a dream in which his father orders him to re-open the old neighborhood movie theater, thus breaking the vow that Morris had made years before never to screen movies again. Nissim and his brother George, together with Aharon Gabardine, who was the projectionist back in the old days, are determined to fulfill Morris' request. The same day Nissim has his dream, Avram Mandabon, Morris' brother, returns for his brother's memorial after a 25-year absence. His reappearance causes old family feuds to resurface.

The Body

An ancient skeleton has been discovered in Jerusalem in a rich man's tomb. Colouration of the wrist and leg bones indicates the cause of death was crucifiction. other signs, include a gold coin bearing the marks of Pontius Pilate and faint markings around the skull, lead authorities to suspect that these could be the bones of Jesus Christ. Politicians, clerics, religious extremists and those using terror as a means to an end, find their beliefs and identities tested while risking their lives to unearth the truth.....

1948

The documentary records the memories of a group of Palestinian elders, mainly veterans from the 1948 expulsions. Their stories of refugee struggles are interspersed with poems of Mahmoud Darwish.

Sous les pieds des femmes

This romantic, political drama is about the reunion of an Algerian woman who abandoned her lover 35 years earlier to live in France, and the lover who chose to stay in Algeria and fight the French colonials.

Short Stories About Love

Israeli short films mini-series.

The Milky Way

1964, a village in Galilee. The Mukhtar collaborates with Israeli military rule. Someone is forging work permits, and the Mukhtar's son and a steady metalsmith, Mahmud, want to marry the same woman. These story lines cross when the village teacher is arrested and jailed for the forgeries, with the Mukhtar's approval. Mahmoud discovers who the real forger is and goes to the Mukhtar, whose son assumes Mahmud has come to denounce him. He sets off to burn down Mahmoud's house; tragedy follows. At Mahmud's side through his troubles is Mabruq, the village fool who, like others, particularly a young woman named Jamilah, still suffers from witnessing horrors in the 1948 war.

Scar

Scar holds a special place in the development and oeuvre of Ronit Elkabetz: it’s her first work as a co-screenwriter, and her sole work for someone other than herself or her brother, Shlomi.

Tale of the Three Jewels

A Palestinian boy becomes entranced with a beautiful Romani girl and a fairy tale world she weaves amidst conflict in Gaza. The children explore nature, mysticism and what their future holds, while learning to live with the surrounding brutality c. 1990. Yusef's family scrapes by in a seaside camp while his father's in prison and his heavily-armed brother's on the run, parrying with Israeli troops. Salah, Yusef's schoolmate from a well-off Arab family strives faithfully to assist them, while Yusef helps an elderly, blind neighbor escape from his lonely abandonment into the North American dreamworld he's waited so long for.

Haifa

Haifa, nicknamed after the city of his love and hope, goes around and comes around in a Palestinian refugee camp. Although he is everybody's fool, there are many things that only he knows. He is closely related to the family of Abu Said, a former policeman who gains new hopes from the political developments. Oum Said, his wife, hangs her hope on the imminent release of their eldest son, Said, from jail. She tries to find him a bride to secure things for the future. Their youngest son, Siad, is cynical and rebellious. He refuses to believe things. Sabah, the 12 year old daughter is romancing the future and wants to find out what's in it for her. The different stories are interwoven into a very timely insight into the current Palestinian mind.

The Mummy Lives

An Egyptian noble, sentenced to death for a forbidden affair, returns from the grave 3,000 years later and becomes obsessed with a woman whom he thinks is the reincarnation of his dead lover.

Double Edge

Upon arriving Israel on her first foreign assignment, American photojournalist Faye Milano is greeted by David, an Israeli officer and writer who's also the nephew of Jerusalem's mayor

Beyond the Walls II

Directed by Uri Barbash.

Cup Final

An Israeli soldier is taken hostage by a small PLO squad in Lebanon. The soldier planned to go on vacation and to fly to the world final soccer cup, he and his capturers share the love to soccer and toward the (not so happy) end a relationship is made.

Shelter

Directed by Rashid Masharawi.

Rami og Julie

A Palestinian refugee living in Copenhagen is rescued from a gang of racist thugs by a young woman with whom he falls in love.

Death Before Dishonor

Gunnery Sergeant Burns reports for duty to an American Embassy in the Middle East. However due to the 'enlightened' views of the Ambassador, the marine security detachment he is in charge of is severely restricted in their functions and presence to avoid upsetting the host government. As a result, when terrorists attack the compound, they are able to kidnap hostages and escape with little opposition. Burns ignores the Ambassador's restrictions, and throws the rule books out the window, as he becomes a one man army in an attempt to rescue the hostages, and wipe out the terrorists.

Esther

Ahasverus, king of Persia and Media, puts aside Vashti and makes Esther his queen, choosing her among maidens in a kingdom stretching from India to Ethiopia. Esther, using information from Mordecai, her uncle and patron, saves the king from assassination. Haman, the king's favorite, is miffed when Mordecai won't bow to him, so he orders death to all Jews in the kingdom, under the seal of the king. Esther pleads for her people, and Mordecai is in turn given license to make his own edict under the king's seal. Mordecai loses sight of his original intention, and bloody murder ensues. Purim annually celebrates the story. At the end of the film, the actors comment.

Beyond the Walls

In Israel's Central Prison, the security officer is corrupt, supplying drugs and stirring the hatred between Jewish and Arab prisoners to his advantage. Uri, in for 12 years for armed robbery, and Issan, in for 50 years for PLO violence, command the respect of their cells. When the Arabs are framed for the murder of a Jewish prisoner and a young inmate commits suicide rather than lie about what happened, Uri and Issan form an unlikely partnership, leading the security block on a strike. Prison officials try to break it. In the background are Uri's daughter and Issan's wife, women of beauty and passion who embody the distance from inside a cell to the outside.

Hanna K.

Israeli attorney Hanna Kaufman has her beliefs challenged when she is appointed to the defense of Selim Bakri. Kaufman, who was born in the United States to survivors of the Holocaust, has always accepted Israel's right to exist. But she bears witness to some of the costs of its sovereignty when she meets Bakri, a dispossessed Palestinian man facing serious criminal charges who wants the same thing as his supposed enemies: to reclaim his family home.

La maison de la mémoire

Based on the novel "L'avenir est un crime du passé" an autobiographical novel of Arab cameraman Rahal Amin Touati, and "The house of certain Death" written by Albert Cosseri.

Fairuz

A story about growing older and the loneliness of losing people around you.