Saleh Bakri

Marked each year by celebrations, Israel’s Independence Day coincides with the commemoration of Al-Nakba (the Catastrophe) — the day Palestinians memorialize their dispossession and displacement. For Tamer (Mahmoud Bakri, a member of the acting dynasty begun by veteran Palestinian performer Mohammad Bakri) and his high-school friends — Safwat (Mohammed Abd El Rahman), Shekel (Mohammad Karaki), and Rida (Ahmed Zaghmouri) — the social and psychological dissonance of being Palestinian in Israel is a daily struggle that is only heightened in the lead-up to Nakba Day.

Halim has been married to Mina for a long time, with whom he runs a traditional caftan store in the medina (old town) of Salé, Morocco. The couple has always lived with Halim's secret – his homosexuality – about which he has learned to keep quiet. However, Mina's illness and the arrival of a young apprentice upsets this balance. United in their love, each will help the other face his fears.

The story unfolds in the winter of the year 1215. A mysterious stranger who has escaped from prison arrives in a tiny, remote village in the kingdom of France plagued by famine and leprosy, and ruled by an ageing lord, a former hero from the Crusades, Lord Ocam. Together with his horde of knights, Ocam abducts a young girl from the village in order to exert his droit du seigneur over her. A handful of villagers, backed up by The Stranger, attempt to release her, but they only have until nightfall…

5.2/10

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?

7.5/10

A divorced mother looks to protect her daughter after an unexpected tragedy.

6/10
7.8%

A Palestinian couple resorts to an unusual way to conceive as the husband is detained in an Israeli jail where visits are restricted.

7.6/10

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.

7.3/10
10%

'Zinzana' is a psychological thriller set in a prison. Our hero finds himself locked in a cell with no I.D and no memory of what happened the night before. But being unable to make bail is the least of his problems when he's forced to play a madman's twisted game in order to save his family's lives.

6.7/10

Jordan, 1967: displaced to a refugee camp after the occupation of their West Bank village, an eleven-year old boy and his mother enact the emancipating dream that every refugee has imagined countless times, in Annemarie Jacir's passionate and moving follow-up to her prize-winning debut Salt of This Sea.

6.6/10

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 ...

6.4/10

A hitman for the Sicilian Mafia, Salvo is solitary, cold and ruthless. When he sneaks into a house to eliminate a man, he discovers Rita, a young blind girl who powerlessly stands by while her brother is assassinated. Salvo tries to close those disturbing eyes, staring at him yet unseeing. Something impossible happens. Rita's eyes see for the first time. Salvo decides to spare her life. From then on, these two beings, both haunted by the world they belong to, are linked together forever.

6/10
7.5%

The night of the 31st of December, in the middle of the fireworks, a group of international ecologists blows up the biggest steelworks of Europe.

7.4/10

A comedy/drama set in a village and centered on a battle of the sexes, where women threaten to withhold sexual favours as long as the men refuse to install a water pipe.

7.3/10

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.

7/10
8.4%

A young man, who feels constrained living with his father takes drastic measures to liberate himself.

7.8/10

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.

6.9/10
5.4%

"At eight o'clock, it's Laila's birthday, okay?" Palestinian judge turned cab driver Abu Laila's wife reminds her husband. But on his young daughter's birthday, like any day, Abu faces a nerve-wracking shift in a Ramallah yellow cab armed only with an ex-jurist's misplaced pride, a father's loyalty, and a sticker reminding passengers that smoking and carrying AK-47s are prohibited. Rather than address politics or document holy war heroics and villainy, Laila's Birthday focuses on the toll that the unending Palestinian-Israeli conflict extracts from civilians clinging to both employment and a semblance of normal life amidst chaos and corruption, missile attacks and bursts of gunfire.

6.6/10
8%

Academy Award winning director James Cameron and Emmy Award winning investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici have joined forces and produced a documentary film claiming to have identified the tomb and physical remains of Jesus of Nazareth.

5.9/10

A small Egyptian police band travels to Israel to play at the inaugural ceremony of an Arab arts center, only to find themselves stuck in the wrong town.

7.5/10
9.8%

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.

Members of a family who quit the polluted, rubbish-strewn city of Lebanon for an idyllic mountain home. However, their dreams of a utopian existence are shattered by the construction of a landfill on the boundary of their land

Derviş Zaim turns his camera into a tragedy in Syria this time and reminds once again the value of telling stories. Flash memory is from a true story; It is inspired by a Syrian military officer secretly taking out 11,000 photographs documenting the regime's violence against civilians and opponents. Losing his ability to speak as a result of an attack, Ahmet starts working in a unit where people who died in conflicts are photographed and recorded. He wants to announce what he sees to the world, and to give voice to stories stuck in war. He has to choose between protecting himself and his wife or fulfilling his responsibility to humanity.

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.

4.8/10
1.7%

Star-crossed immigrant lovers roam their gated community drink-by-drink in search of the perfect house.

5.7/10
5%