Cinema, as one of the most powerful tools of storytelling, has often been used to chronicle the pain, resilience, and identity of a people. For Palestinians, whose history is deeply marked by displacement, occupation, and enduring resistance, film has become not just an artistic medium but a vital means of documentation, testimony, and preservation of memory. The story of Palestine is one that has frequently been silenced, misrepresented, or ignored by dominant global narratives. It is within the frame of cinema—through the lens of Palestinian filmmakers and international allies—that a different voice emerges: one that speaks of shattered homes, vanished villages, children growing up beneath drones, and families navigating checkpoints and exile.
From the earliest years of occupation and forced migration, the need to assert Palestinian identity and resist erasure became a central theme in many films. Directors like Michel Khleifi emerged in the 1980s as pioneers of what came to be known as Palestinian national cinema. His film Wedding in Galilee (1987) was a subtle yet potent exploration of life under Israeli military rule, infused with metaphor, poetry, and political critique. In his hands, a wedding—a moment of communal joy—became a space of negotiation between occupation and cultural endurance. Around the same time, several documentaries began to appear, capturing stories from the camps of Lebanon and the devastated neighborhoods of Gaza, providing an alternative archive of Palestinian suffering that the mainstream media neglected or distorted.
As the Second Intifada unfolded in the early 2000s, Palestinian filmmakers like Hany Abu-Assad rose to international prominence. His film Paradise Now (2005), which follows two childhood friends preparing for a suicide bombing mission in Tel Aviv, stirred controversy for daring to humanize those often depicted only as threats or statistics. Far from justifying violence, the film grappled with the moral and existential torment bred by systematic dehumanization. Abu-Assad’s follow-up, Omar (2013), continued in this vein, portraying love and betrayal in the shadow of the separation wall and the manipulation of Palestinian youth by Israeli intelligence. These stories were not propaganda—they were deeply human explorations of how life is shaped when lived inside a cage.
Another landmark work is 5 Broken Cameras (2011), a deeply personal documentary co-directed by Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat and Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi. Filmed over several years, it documents the nonviolent resistance in the village of Bil’in against the Israeli West Bank barrier. Each of Burnat’s cameras is destroyed by violence—either by bullets, bombs, or beatings—turning their destruction into a visual metaphor for the fragility of truth and the persistence of the Palestinian struggle. It is both diary and outcry, showing a father trying to protect his children while recording the theft of his land. The quiet heartbreak of this film lies in its refusal to dramatize suffering; instead, it allows the everyday to reveal the unbearable.
More recent films have turned their gaze toward Gaza, a region repeatedly decimated by war and blockade. In Gaza Fights for Freedom (2019), directed by American journalist Abby Martin, firsthand footage of the Great March of Return protests exposes the brutal reality of life in the besieged strip. This documentary, largely censored or ignored in the West, chronicles peaceful demonstrations met with sniper fire and collective punishment. It features stories of young men and women who speak not just of survival, but of dignity, identity, and the human desire to be seen. These images are raw and often painful, but they are necessary. They break through the statistical coldness of death tolls and reveal the faces behind the numbers.
The theme of exile and longing permeates the work of Annemarie Jacir, one of the most important voices in contemporary Palestinian cinema. Her film Salt of This Sea(2008) follows a Brooklyn-born Palestinian woman who travels to the West Bank to reclaim her grandfather’s lost home and inheritance. In a society where movement is surveilled and freedom conditional, her journey becomes an act of reclaiming memory. Jacir’s later film, When I Saw You (2012), set in a refugee camp in Jordan after the 1967 war, focuses on a young boy searching for his missing father. Both films are imbued with tenderness and defiance; they explore the psychological toll of dispossession and the persistence of hope in the face of decades of statelessness.
Other works, such as Farah Nabulsi’s The Present (2020), which won CWB’s Bridging the Borders Award and was nominated for an Academy Award, take a minimalist approach to portray the surreal cruelty of occupation. In the span of a single day, a father and daughter set out to buy a refrigerator for their family. What should be a mundane errand becomes a Kafkaesque ordeal through Israeli checkpoints, where humiliation and restriction strip everyday life of its dignity. In just over 20 minutes, the film encapsulates a central truth of the Palestinian experience: that resistance is often not found in speeches or slogans, but in the struggle to live normally.
Outside the Arab world, filmmakers have also attempted to bear witness. Jean-Luc Godard famously declared that cinema must side with the oppressed, and throughout his later years, he increasingly referred to Palestine as a moral test for Western consciousness. International documentaries such as Occupation 101 and Roadmap to Apartheid have been instrumental in educating new audiences, drawing comparisons between Israeli policies and historical systems of segregation like apartheid South Africa. Yet, many of these films struggle for distribution, censored or marginalized by institutions wary of political backlash.
Palestinian cinema does not exist only to showcase victimhood. These films, as diverse as they are unified by a collective memory of loss and resistance, also depict joy, love, weddings, food, music, and the quiet resilience of people who refuse to disappear. The camera becomes both witness and weapon—a way of asserting presence in a world that has tried to erase them. These films say: we were here, we are here, and we will be remembered not just by the ashes of our homes, but by the stories we told.
In a time when truth is contested and history rewritten, these films stand as acts of resistance. They do not beg for sympathy; they demand recognition. To watch them is to confront uncomfortable truths. To ignore them is to become complicit in silence. Through film, Palestinians speak to the world not only of their suffering, but of their right to narrate their own story—a story that has always been more than tragedy, a story that insists on life.
