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Canadian film “Yintah” won the main competition jury prize, which comes with 8,000 euros, at the 22nd edition of the Millennium Docs Against Gravity film festival. The documentary event, which played in Warsaw and six other Polish cities, ended on May 18.

“Yintah” tells the story of a Canadian-based Indigenous nation’s fight for sovereignty as it resists the construction of multiple oil and fracked-gas pipelines across its territory. Co-directed by Brenda Michell, Michael Toledano, and Jennifer Wickham, the docu captures the Wet’suwet’en nation’s right to stewardship and sovereignty over their territories.

The jury called it “a painfully beautiful viewing experience that challenges us to imagine and enact resistance — before it’s too late.”

“Bedrock,” by first-time filmmaker Kinga Michalska, about contemporary Poles living on Holocaust sites, won the best Polish film award.

The themes of these films — history, genocide, resistance and resilence — were on the minds of many...

Exclusive: The Palestine Film Institute (Pfi) has launched the Palestine Film Fund (Pff) to support Palestinian filmmakers worldwide in creating authentic narratives and taking control of their own images and stories.

The body will present the fund at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday, in an event at its pavilion in the Marché du Film’s International Village. Palestine is represented in Cannes Official Selection this year by Tarzan Nasser and Arab Nasser’s Once Upon A Time In Gaza, which premieres in Un Certain Regard.

The fund will offer grants worth between €5,000 ($5.5k) to €15,000 ($16.7k) to short and feature film projects at various stages of development and production.

All Palestinian filmmakers working in challenging circumstances will be eligible for the fund, regardless of their place of residence or nationality. Priority will be given to directors based in Palestine, in lower income countries, or in regions where discrimination against Palestinian...

Distributor Watermelon Pictures (which launched last year) is proud to unveil its latest venture, a new streaming platform called Watermelon+. Debuting today, Thursday, May 8, the streamer aims to highlight the work of Palestinian filmmakers and world cinema as a whole. This comes at a time when some streamers are facing criticism for removing Palestinian films from their platform entirely.

Watermelon+ comes on the heels of successful theatrical runs for the documentary “The Encampments” and the feature debut for Oscar nominee Farah Nabulsi, “The Teacher.” Nabulsi’s Oscar-nominated short “The Present” will also be available upon launch, while “The Encampments” streams later this summer. Dozens of acclaimed films including “From Ground Zero” (Palestine’s Official 2025 Academy Awards entry) will be showcased on the platform, as well as Oscar nominees “Omar” (2014 Best International Film), “Five Broken Cameras” (2013 Best Documentary Feature), and “Theeb” (2016 Best International Film).

Co-founded by Ceos and brothers Badie and Hamza Ali,...

Exclusive: Production and distribution company Watermelon Pictures is launching Watermelon+, a streaming service showcasing Palestinian and world cinema.

Watermelon+ will be available to worldwide subscribers from May 8, and will host original productions, new releases and series alongside classic titles.Subscriptions are priced at $7.99 for a month, or $79.99 annually.

US-based Watermelon Pictures launched last year, aiming to “deliver powerful, entertaining stories and amplifying bold voices from marginalised and underrepresented communities”, according to the Watermelon Pictures team.

The company is founded by co-CEOs and brothers Badie Ali and Hamza Ali; with Alana Hadid, sister of supermodels Bella and Gigi Hadid, as creative director.

Believe it or not, this review was scheduled shortly before the buzz hit. Sadly, yesterday, Hamdan Ballal was assaulted during a settlers’ raid and arrested by the Israeli army, only weeks after “No Other Land” won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. But let’s assume you do not know anything about the film and start with the beginning.

In the south of the West Bank lies a handful of small Bedouin villages known as Masafer Yatta. The area has been designated a military zone by the Israeli authorities, and its residents are therefore being forced out. “No Other Land” documents the resistance of these inhabitants against this decision. Four people – two Israelis and two Palestinians, journalists and activists that met in action – unite to fight this situation with their cameras. Among them, Hamdan Ballal, a Palestinian photographer already involved in fighting the occupation and Rachel Szor, an Israeli...

“This is a film that I love dearly. I think we use the word urgent a little bit not with as much intention as we should. And I think a film like this really occupies that word,” said Oscar winner Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour“), introducing a special screening of the documentary “No Other Land” at Scandinavia House in New York City on October 14. The film chronicles the efforts of the Israeli military and settlers to displace the Palestinian population of the Masafer Yatta region of the West Bank, as seen from the point of view of Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, who co-directed the film with Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor. Abraham and Adra participated in a virtual Q&a from Israel and the West Bank, respectively, moderated by Oscar nominee Yance Ford (“Strong Island“).

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“I think...

International documentary filmmakers and industry reps are gathering at Sheffield DocFest in the U.K. at a moment of political tumult in Europe. British voters head to the polls for a general election on July 4; in France, President Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called snap legislative elections after a French ultranationalist party surged in voting for the European Parliament. Germany’s far-right AfD party also scored substantial gains in that European Parliament vote. Overall, the center held — more or less.

If there’s anything the documentary community is used to dealing with it’s turbulence, whether at the macro level of major change in the business itself, or at the micro level of getting a film production off the ground. The message to DocFest attendees this week has been to insist on solidarity – to support each other — in the face of geopolitical and economic uncertainty.

Patrizia Mancini, Head of...

“Israelism,” a timely documentary exploring changing Jewish attitudes toward Israel, has been acquired by newly-launched distributor Watermelon Pictures for North America.

The film, the directorial debut of Erin Axelman and Sam Eilertsen, premiered at the 2023 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and went on to win multiple awards, including an audience award at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. It will be released in theaters and on digital platforms nationwide early this summer.

As per the synopsis, “Israelism” is an “eye-opening and essential exploration of the dramatic shift in Jewish attitudes toward Israel, informed by Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, revealing a deepening generational divide over modern Jewish identity.”

The film centers on two young American Jews, Simone Zimmerman and Eitan, who are raised to defend the state of Israel at all costs. Eitan joins the Israeli military, while Zimmerman supports Israel on “the other battlefield:” America’s college campuses. When...

In Israel, military service is mandatory. Director Guy Davidi, whose documentary “Innocence” premiered at the Venice Film Festival in the Horizons section, served as well. “I didn’t want to be a combatant, to hold a gun. I felt used, abused, like an instrument for the country. I already knew I was going to make films, did not have hopes to become a politician or a lawyer, so their threats did not have big weight. But for others getting a psychological evaluation and be released on psycho-mental grounds like I did is not an option,” he says.

“The other thing is that at this age if you’re not in the military, there’s nothing for you to do,” he adds. “Israel is not a place that values innocence. Our history as persecuted Jews, our enlightened democracy are both in use in our solid PR kit,” Davidi says. “If you...

More than 250 of Israel’s top filmmakers have signed an open letter, saying they will not seek funding from, nor cooperate with the recently–established Shomron (Samaria/West Bank) Film Fund, following the fund’s inaugural film festival in the occupied West Bank.

The filmmakers call on the Israeli Academy of Film and Television not to partake in “whitewashing the Occupation” ahead of the Ophir Awards — Israel’s Academy Awards — later this month. Read the full text of the letter below.

Among the signatories are multiple Academy Award winners and nominees. They have signed a public letter in which they state that they will not receive grants and will not participate in “lectura” (selection of films for development and production) or in professional events held by the Shomron (Samaria) Film Fund. The goal of the Shomron (Samaria) Film Fund, write the filmmakers, is “to invite Israeli filmmakers to actively participate...

Guy Davidi, known for Sundance and Emmy winning and Oscar nominated documentary “Five Broken Cameras,” is Venice bound with his next film “Innocence.”

The film, which is in the festival’s Horizons strand, the only documentary selected in the section, tells the story of children who were unwillingly enlisted into the Israel military service, and many of them died. Through a narration based on their diaries, the film depicts their inner turmoil and interweaves first-hand military images, key moments from childhood until enlistment and home videos of the deceased soldiers.

“Nothing touches me more than a child’s sensitivity when they discover the world, and nothing hurts me more than seeing it getting crushed. Israel is not a place that values innocence. Its militarized identity requires the breaking down and distorting of the gentle lines of childhood. This commitment to violence has many victims, but there’s also a hidden tragedy – the collapse of parenthood,...

Click here to read the full article.

A group of Israeli filmmakers and artists are urging the Locarno Film Festival to drop the world premiere screening of Israeli feature My Neighbor Adolf due to concerns over what the group is calling “racist” and “explicitly political” conditions attached to its funding, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

The tragicomedy, from Russian-born Israeli director Leon Prudovsky (Five Hours From Paris), is currently set to get a screening in Locarno on Thursday, Aug. 4, the second day of the festival, but the group — which includes Oscar-nominated director Guy Davidi (Five Broken Cameras, upcoming Venice-bowing doc Innocence) — has signed a letter calling on this event to be pulled because of the film’s support by the Rabinovich Foundation’s Israel Cinema Project, Israel’s largest film fund.

The move comes a day after Pacbi, the cultural arm of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, a Palestinian-led...

Right now, every film festival shares the same ambition: Get smarter about how to connect with audiences online. In the coming weeks, Hot Docs, Human Rights Watch, and AFI Docs will present online lineups; at Doc NYC, where I’m the artistic director, we are busily adapting to new realities for our November festival.

We’ve also seen online festivals inspire pessimism from some sales agents and programmers — but we don’t have time for that kind of thinking. Many filmmakers can’t hold back their work until next year, when competition will only increase for premiere slots and buyer attention, and many festivals can’t wait because they will cease to exist without revenue. We all need to keep getting smarter, faster.

While we all want to get back into theaters, the public is swiftly adapting to watch online content non-stop. Everyone from health care workers to dancers are...

Ramallah is only 10 miles north of Jerusalem, but for Palestinians living under occupation, the distance feels much longer. In “Mayor,” a thrilling and perceptive new documentary from director David Osit, the normalcy of everyday life faces the constant threat of disruption. That’s the conundrum facing Musa Hadid, the overworked protagonist at the center of an operatic vérité drama that often dips into bureaucratic black comedy and unnerving suspense, as Hadid’s exasperated attempts to keep the peace dissolve into a constant swirl of frustration.

There have been countless documentaries made about the West Bank experience, from “5 Broken Cameras” to “The Settlers,” and they often involve the travails of ordinary life existing side by side with military persecution. “Mayor” offers a striking new perspective on that struggle, with a personal on-the-ground quality matched by grand tonal ambitions that makes it the best of its subgenre.

Unfolding across several months...

New festival director Orwa Nyrabia reveals his priorities.

International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (Idfa), opens with the world premiere of Aboozer Amini’s Kabul, City In The Wind today (November 14), and is the first festival to start reporting on how it is measuring up to the gender pledge it signed earlier this year.

The pledge, organised by French initiative 5050x2020, commits the festival to equal representation for women and men across the festival and is a key goal of new festival director Orwa Nyrabia. “It is a very serious commitment,” says Nyrabia.

“It is a big issue that our industry is...

According to local filmmakers, the recent suppression of documentary Beyond The Fear is just one episode in a quickening erosion of artistic freedom in Israel.

As Nanni Moretti’s Mia Madre began to roll on the opening night of the Jerusalem Film Festival in the picturesque Sultan’s Pool amphitheatre in early July, another screening was kicking off just metres above the spectators’ heads.

On a terrace overlooking the event, some 50 film-makers and producers had gathered for a protest screening of Maria Kravchenko and the late Herz Frank’s Beyond The Fear.

They included The Kindergarten Teacher director Nadav Lapid; Keren Yedaya, who won Cannes’ Camera d’Or for her debut work Or; Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, whose credits include the award-winning The Law In These Parts; and Shlomi Elkabetz, co-director of the Golden Globe-nominated Gett: The Trial Of Viviane Amsalem which premiered in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in May 2014 and went on to win best film at...

Motorcycle Diaries: Curry Sees VanDyke Grow From Boy To Rebel

As kids, nearly everyone falls in love with the idea of throwing caution to the wind and buckling down for endless adventures into the great unknown. As we grow up most of us accept the comforts of familiarity and the rhythms and reliability of our network of loving friends and family, inevitably packing up our dreams of adventure along with our stuffed animals and action figures. Apparently, this thought never occurred for Matthew VanDyke, who grew up watching Alby Mangels’s cavalier travelogue World Safari films, transfixed by the idea of traversing the Earth’s wildest corners with camera in hand.

After graduating from Georgetown University with a Master’s in Security Studies in the Middle East, VanDyke felt compelled to follow in his idol’s footsteps, bought a camera and motorcycle and took off across the the Arab world...

Update: Emad Burnat, co-director of "5 Broken Cameras," has issued a statement about his and his family's detention at Lax en route to the Oscars: "Last night, on my way from Turkey to Los Angeles, CA, my family and I were held at Us immigration for about an hour and questioned about the purpose of my visit to the United States. Immigration officials asked for proof that I was nominated for an Academy Award® for the documentary 5 Broken Cameras and they told me that if I couldn't prove the reason for my visit, my wife Soraya, my son Gibreel and I would be sent back to Turkey on the same day. "After 40 minutes of questions and answers, Gibreel asked me why we were still waiting in that small room. I simply told him the truth: 'Maybe we'll have to go back.' I could see his heart sink. "Although this was an unpleasant experience,...

Michael Moore couldn’t save Flint, Michigan’s auto plants in the ’80s — but he did help to get Palestinian filmmaker Emad Burnat released from Lax’s detention room last night. Burnat is currently up for a Best Documentary Oscar for his film 5 Broken Cameras.

Burnat and his family arrived in Los Angeles last night in order to attend this week’s Academy Awards ceremony. But before they could exit the city’s main airport, they were “held at Us immigration for about an hour and questioned about the purpose of my visit to the United States,” Burnat said in a statement.

The first Palestinian documentary filmmaker nominated for an Academy Award, Emad Burnat on Tuesday narrowly avoided a mix up that could have barred him from attending the ceremony. Burnat, the co-director of the film 5 Broken Cameras, was detained along with his family by immigration officials after arriving at LAX, his representative confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. He was released after questioning. Michael Moore, a governor of the Academy's documentary branch and a champion of Burnat's film, tweeted about the incident in detail late Tuesday.

"Emad, his wife & 8-yr old son were placed in a holding area and told they didn't have the proper invitation on them to attend the Oscars," he wrote.

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Who’s in, who’s out?

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has finally settled the debate with its announcement of nominees for the 85th Academy Awards. Lincoln leads the pack with 12 nominations, followed by Life of Pi with 11.

Analysis is to come, but below are the contenders for the ceremony, which will take place Feb. 24.

Best Picture

Amour

Argo

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Django Unchained

Les Miserables

Life of Pi

Lincoln

Silver Linings Playbook

Zero Dark Thirty

Best Actor

Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook

Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables

Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

Denzel Washington,...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that 15 films in the ever-controversial Documentary Feature category will advance in the voting process for the 85th Academy Awards. A whopping 126 pictures had originally qualified in the category. The 15 films are listed below in alphabetical order by title, with their production companies:    "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry," Never Sorry LLC    "Bully," The Bully Project LLC    "Chasing Ice," Exposure    "Detropia," Loki Films    "Ethel," Moxie Firecracker Films    "5 Broken Cameras," Guy DVD Films    "The Gatekeepers," Les Films du Poisson, Dror Moreh Productions, Cinephil    "The House I Live In," Charlotte Street Films, LLC    "How to Survive a Plague," How to Survive a Plague LLC    "The...

Kino Lorber, Inc. has acquired all North American rights to the documentary "5 Broken Cameras," winner of the World Cinema Directing Award at the recently wrapped 2012 Sundance Film Festival. The company plans to release it theatrically in late summer, followed by a home video and digital release at the end of the year. Full release below: Kino Lorber Acquires All Us Rights To Award-winning Doc 5 Broken Cameras (2012) Winner of the World Cinema Directing Award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival New York, NY – February 3, 2012 - Kino Lorber, Inc. (www.kinolorber.com) is proud to announce the acquisition of all Us rights to the acclaimed documentary 5 Broken Cameras (2012), a daring chronicle of resistance in the West Bank by first-time Palestinian director Emad Burnat and Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi. Filmed from the perspective of a Palestinian farm laborer (i.e. co-director Emad Burnat), 5 Broken Cameras was shot using five...