🔗 Share this article

Global backing for Palestine’s causes is growing, including the film industry, where numerous of film workers have signed a commitment to avoid Israeli film groups considered complicit in the conflict in the Gaza Strip, and high-profile stars are backing films that center the Palestinian people’s lived reality.

However, Palestinian-produced movies still face challenges to secure distribution and gain visibility – despite a significant Oscars win recently. To highlight Palestine’s rich tradition of cinema, we invited prominent Palestinian directors and artists to discuss their top Palestinian-made films.

‘It Brought Me to Tears’: Mo Amer Reflects on All That’s Left Of You

Director Cherien Dabis’s movie All That’s Left of You, which debuted this year at the Sundance Film Festival, is a rare film, unflinching and memorable. By portraying the story of a one Palestinian family, from its roots in pre-Nakba Jaffa through decades of displacement, it does not just tell a tale – it celebrates a legacy.

The visuals are rich and immersive. Each scene feels intentional, every frame a memory – the orange groves of Jaffa, the roads of Nablus, the isolation of displacement. The acting are powerful, highlighting the director’s remarkable range alongside three generations of the Bakris – the family of performers most synonymous with Palestinian cinema. They are complex, subtle and deeply authentic.

What’s most impressive is how smoothly the movie moves between time periods without ever breaking its emotional throughline. Every period of the Palestinian history is depicted with stunning detail, both in imagery and emotionally. The filmmaking is skillful in that regard, leading you through time with clarity and sensitivity.

In the final moments, I was brought to tears. All That’s Left of You isn’t just about the past, it’s about the unseen manners it influences who we are. It’s a film that stays with you – not because of spectacle, but because of honesty.

• Mo Amer is a Palestinian American actor and comedian and the maker of a popular Netflix series.

‘The Most Wildly Original Palestinian Film Ever Made’: Cherien Dabis on Divine Intervention

A shades-wearing Palestinian woman boldly struts through a checkpoint. Israel’s troops look on, weapons pointed, confused. Her beauty subdues them and causes the watchtower crashing down. It’s an iconic moment from director Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention that has stayed with me ever since I first saw the movie. I was a second-year graduate cinema student at Columbia University when it opened in the US in the early 2000s. I recall being stunned by its impact, its resistance, and its sheer audacity.

During an era when most Palestinian film leaned toward the serious or tragic, the director carved a new path. Through dark humor, straight-faced acting, and almost silent storytelling, he captured the bizarre ridiculousness of life under military control. Playing the film’s mute main character personally, he centered his own perspective at the core of the narrative. That decision felt radical. His presence was composed and understated, which only heightened the tension all around him.

Divine Intervention is both intimately personal and highly political. Its imagery is global, yet grounded in the fractured reality of Palestinian self. The filmmaker turns separation, exile and resistance into something approaching poetry. The outcome is poignant, dreamlike, sometimes hilarious and always deeply honest.

There was nothing similar to it in Palestinian cinema at the time. There still isn’t. It continues to be, for me, the most wildly original and creative Palestinian movie ever created.

• Cherien Dabis is a Palestinian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, film producer and actor, whose latest movie is an official submission for the Academy Awards.

‘A Remarkable New Voice’: Hany Abu Assad on To a Land Unknown

For me, a great film needs to do two things. It needs to provide an journey that’s new, emotional and intelligent. It needs to give me an element I’ve been lacking – a point of view that challenges my belief system, a way to think about topics outside my own world, a window to a distinct era and location. In short, I need to feel enriched, in spirit and in mind.

Additionally, it needs to move me with its talent. A ability that is not busy seeking approval but is employed to open my eyes to an idea more important.

The film To a Land Unknown, which was released last year, is precisely this kind of movie. Created by Mahdi Fleifel, it is a tale about two Palestinian friends looking for improved futures as displaced persons in the country of Greece.

To a Land Unknown allowed me to experience what it’s like to be a vulnerable refugee, in a strange land, where everything works in opposition to your efforts to escape the ghetto. It showed me that in certain situations, even when conditions outside your influence conspire against you, you yourself can still turn into your own biggest obstacle. And its interplay between story and visual form floored me in its artistry.

In To a Land Unknown, the Palestinian cause has gained a talent that will serve its cause without spilling a one drop of blood.

• Hany Abu-Assad is a Palestinian-Dutch filmmaker, screenwriter and twice Academy Award contender for his acclaimed works.

‘It Shows Israel Views Even Cows as a Threat’: Basel Adra on The Wanted 18

Among my favorite Palestinian movies is The Wanted 18. It recounts the narrative of Palestinians in Beit Sahour, a town near the city of Bethlehem in the West Bank, during the first intifada of the late 1980s. It records their effort to {