Lebanon, 2019-2023: a chronicle of the uprising, its fading and its end. From collective hope to intimate pain, can cinema resist the irreversible?
Social & External
In an unprecedented and candid series of interviews, six former heads of the Shin Bet — Israel's intelligence and security agency — speak about their role in Israel's decades-long counterterrorism campaign, discussing their controversial methods and whether the ends ultimately justify the means.
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.
Never-before-heard eyewitness accounts from released hostages, survivors, and first responders during the October 7 attacks on Israeli towns and at the Nova Music Festival show the disgusting extent of the crimes of so-called Palestinian freedom fighters. Women and girls were raped, assaulted, and mutilated by members of the Hamas terrorist group and murderous Palestinians from the Gaza Strip who joined this mob. Released hostages have revealed that Israeli captives in Gaza have also been sexually assaulted. Despite the indisputable evidence, these atrocities have received little scrutiny from human rights groups and international organizations. Many leading figures in politics, academia, and media have attempted to minimize or even deny that they occurred. In this documentary, Sheryl Sandberg conducts in-depth interviews with witnesses and survivors of the events that reveal the full sad extent of the Hamas massacre.
An exhaustive explanation of how the military occupation of an invaded territory occurs and its consequences, using as a paradigmatic example the recent history of Israel and the Palestinian territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, from 1967, when the Six-Day War took place, to the present day; an account by filmmaker Avi Mograbi enriched by the testimonies of Israeli army veterans.
How mass protests on the Israel-Gaza border led to one of the deadliest days in a generation. One year later, a moment-by-moment investigation, drawing on exclusive interviews in Gaza and Israel and videos of the protests and bloodshed.
Najwa, Nawal, and Siham, three Palestinian widows, live with their 11 children in a house on Shuhada Street in Hebron. Their house lies on the border; the façade is under Israeli occupation, the Palestinian Authority controls the back. At the entrance to the house is a military post; on the roof the Israeli army has placed a watch point over Palestinian Hebron. The three women, trapped in the middle and constantly surrounded by Israeli soldiers, carry on their difficult lives in a perverse situation: the occupation becomes a routine, the absurd becomes a given. This is the story of an occupation that extends to the staircase and the roof of the house, where it encounters poverty, loneliness, pain, but also the small joys of everyday life. This is an internal prison, the external one is the ongoing occupation.
October 7, 2023: Hamas terrorists attack Israel, murder and take hostages. Israel reacts with severity. The goal: the destruction of Hamas. But with the war in Gaza, Israel is awakening the great trauma of the Palestinians: the expulsion of 1948. How can the lack of empathy on both sides be explained?
A horrible six year conflict befell Syria with a multitude of factions fighting for territories backed by a score of foreign players. The script for war as with Iraq in 2003 originated with Zionist partisans with Israeli interests in mind. From Oded Yinon to the Israeli "Clean Break" papers, the Zionist regime made it very clear what their intentions were in Iraq and Syria. American mass media had a uniform message that "Assad must go" for years until the Trump administration took power. In Iraq, after the US made it clear that they did not back Kurdish secession and would not give them air support, the Iraqi forces chased out the Peshmerga in a mere 36hrs. The world must know that the US was dragged into these conflicts via Israeli pressure and deceptions.
This documentary, filmed after October 7, places recent events in context and retraces the extraordinary history of this region to shed light on the present, interviewing actors and witnesses to this conflict: Islamists, Jewish nationalists, imams, rabbis, intellectuals, urban planners, soldiers, etc.
On the morning of the October 7 attack, Rachel and David Edri were held hostage in their home in Ofakim by a terrorist squad. For 20 hours the couple survived alone with the terrorists until they were rescued by the security forces. During the hours, Rachel offered the terrorists food and drinks, talked with them and took care of one of the wounded.
To examine the deteriorating relations between Palestine and Israel following the Hamas attack on October 7, the director walks into the heart of Jerusalem, a city that has been a holy site for Judaism, Islam, and Christianity for centuries, where tension and hatred have become a daily reality. Even though Jews and Muslims live in the same building, they do not communicate with each other and occasionally attack one another. However, the residents, from their respective positions and perspectives, ponder solutions for coexistence and peace between Muslims and Jews.
The film takes place in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War in which Egypt and Syria launched attacks in Sinai and the Golan Heights. The story is told from the perspective of Israeli soldiers. We are led by Weinraub and his friend Ruso on a day that begins with quiet city streets, but ends with death, destruction and devastation of both body and mind. Various scenes are awash in the surreal, as Weinraub's head hangs out over a rescue helicopter's open door, watching with tranquil desperation as the earth passes beneath, the overpowering whir of the blades creating a hypnotic state. It is not a traditional blood, guts and glory film. There are no men in battle, only the rescue crew trying to pick up the broken pieces.
Na'ama is seventeen. She lives in a sleepy suburbia. She is bored. With detached parents and a rebellious older sister, her life at home is a mess. It all changes when a new girl appears at school. She's introduced to a world of drugs, lesbians and sex. She's thrilled. Her life, at last, becomes exciting. Is it going to last? "Barash" is a coming of age story, planted in the heart of Israeli society, about a young woman who struggles to find her self-identity in an environment that has different ideas about sex, drugs and love.
An Israeli director currently living in Berlin returns to Israel to meet some of her friends from primary school. She learns what has been happening in their lives since their paths parted while we get a glimpse of different Israelis.
Deolindo and Stevenson try to find their place in the middle of the jungle. Along their path we will witness the transformation of a territory where in every moment the present and the past become confused, in a thought-provoking struggle between modernity and tradition. What are the secrets of the jungle? Where are its limits?
“Since 2011, as an author and in a frantic and committed fashion, I record music and dance expressions of various kinds all over the country. From a great conversation with film director Inês Oliveira, who followed my work for a while, I raise fundamental questions in this film: Why do I do what I do? What is this all about? What are the relationships with the people? What differentiates me from scientific work? What is tradition?” — Tiago Pereira.
An impressive insight into the hard and dangerous everyday work life of the miners of Cerro Rico. 4100 meters above sea level they are digging through the crumbly rock to scratch the last remains of silver, zinc, tin and lead off the rock face.
Based on interviews and personal writings, this documentary gives an overview of life at the time: the century of world wars, ideologies and totalitarianism.
Documentary by Christine Choy
In December 2016 a remarkable chapter in music history was closed as the Finnish punk rock band Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät (PKN) retired. Punk Voyage is a feature length documentary film about the last years of the band, with all the ups and downs included. After becoming celebrities in Finland, this incredible quartet continued to conquer new fans around the World. In its seven years run PKN played nearly 300 gigs in 16 countries. In 2015 the band was selected to represent Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest, where they played to over 100 million television spectators. However, the busy traveling and success created a lot of pressure within the band: Kari struggled with the temptations and responsibilities brought by publicity; Sami extended his territory to politics and religion; Toni's and the band's roadie Niila's crush to the the same girl caused conflicts; and Pertti, tired of this all, decided to retire.
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