- The Wanted 18 (2014)
The Wanted 18 documents the efforts of Beit Sahour residents to enter the world of dairy farming during the First Intifada (1987 – 1993) in order to produce their own milk and boycott Israel’s. The military clamping down on the town’s civil disobedience leads to a farcical state of affairs where a town is hiding 18 cows in an act of political resistance, and the Israeli military are in pursuit of these “wanted terrorists”. You couldn’t make it up. The documentary is interspersed with animations offering the comical viewpoint of the cows themselves. Although this leads to very funny moments, the film is a bitter and nostalgic reminder of the ingenuity and co-operative nature of the intifada years, and how this was felt to be part of what was signed away and lost by Arafat at Oslo.
- Speed Sisters (2015)
Follow five fearless female race car drivers as they tear up the West Bank on improvised tracks, with their competitive (and hilarious) natures and idiosyncratic personalities, and the inevitable clashes these bring. The film draws attention to realities in Palestine, such as military violence, checkpoints and barriers to movement, yet also offering up an alternative narrative about women driven to thrive on an international stage, despite battling occupation as well as expectations on them from their own culture. Available on Netflix.
- Roadmap to Apartheid (2012)
A stark comparison between the systems of apartheid in South Africa and Israel. Footage plays out side by side that is staggeringly comparable, from having to show identification to police, to house demolitions, to violent crimes against humanity such as the Sharpeville massacre. South African campaigners who have visited Israel-Palestine reflect on the memories it conjures for them, describing the situation there as even worse. Meanwhile Palestinian activists muse on what they can learn from the South African campaign, such as the optimistic observation that the BDS movement has seen relative speed in being picked up internationally, vis the vis the 20 years it took from South Africa requesting the movement in the 1950s to it being taken up in the international mainstream in the late 70s. Available on Amazon video.
- Thank God It’s Friday (2013)
Nabi Saleh is a Palestinian village, famous for its model of resistance and its Tamimi clan, which stands directly opposite Israeli settlement Halamish, which has taken over Nabi Saleh’s water spring. The documentary spends time with residents of both places. In Nabi Saleh, glimpse a shy pre teen Ahed Tamimi and her already pillar of strength mother Nariman, both of whom, five years later, are currently incarcerated in Israeli jails. Also get a fascinating insight into settler mentality, from its Belgian founder who claims there were no birds here before their arrival, or from brainwashed teens who have been born and raised in Halamish and know nothing else. Watch free here
- Your Father Was Born 100 Years Old, And So Was The Nakba (2017)
This 7 minute short film by Razan Al Salah brings home the torment of not having access to the place you came from. Razan imagines her grandma exploring her hometown of Haifa, now in ’48 (historic Palestine / present day Israel), the only way she could: virtually, on Google StreetView. She is like a ghost, with the most vivid of memories but disconnected from the physical place standing today. It’s only a short film but it’s highly effective and moving. It would be a great choice to screen at any talk on Palestine if there is not time for a feature length film.
[Other Shorts I’d recommend, both dramatisations not documentaries, are The Crossing by Ameen Nayfeh and The Shutter by Bilal Krunz)
- The Gatekeepers (2012)
Former heads of Israeli internal security service, Shin Bet, offer unconstrained, unremorseful, and uncomfortably matter of fact histories of actions they took in their role, taking the audience through the biggest incidents and periods of the last decades of the conflict, such as Rabin’s assassination, along with tactics and justifications they used, maybe even believed in. Sometimes alluding to the moral degradation the occupation has played on their society, the final line of the film comes from Ami Ayalon: “We don’t realise that we face a frustrating situation in which we win every battle, but we lose the war.”
Natasha Self 