Saleh Bakri

A brass band comprised of members of the Egyptian police force head to Israel to play at the inaugural ceremony of an Arab arts center, only to find themselves lost in a foreign city. (imdb)

Soraya, born in Brooklyn in a working class community of Palestinian refugees, discovers that her grandfather's savings were frozen in a bank account in Jaffa when he was exiled in 1948. Stubborn, passionate and determined to reclaim what is hers, she fulfills her life-long dream of "returning" to Palestine. (philistinefilms.org)

An examination of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 through to the present day. (imdb)

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. (tiff.net)

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. (imdb)

When an airstrike kills the mate of a female giraffe at a local zoo in the West Bank, a 10-year-old Palestinian boy must travel to Tel Aviv and secure a companion for the distraught animal, in this wild and heartfelt adventure epic. (tiff.net)

Trapped in a prison cell ("Zinzana") in a remote police station, a man named Talal (Saleh Bakri) is tortured by visions of his beloved ex-wife and son as he waits to hear his fate. When officer Daban (Ali Suliman) from a neighboring town stops by, Talal watches as the friendly visit suddenly turns into a bloodbath. Being behind bars is now the least of Talal's problems, as he is forced to play a madman's game to save his family's lives. (imdb)

Chic Point was shot in a fictional location: the occupied catwalk. Employing all the elements of a fashion show, models reveal their abdomens in outfits designed especially to suit Israeli checkpoints. For Israelis in the present time, the individual Palestinian body is the most dangerous weapon there is, and it is therefore the subject of ongoing and humiliating surveillance.

A father and his estranged son must come together to hand deliver his daughter's wedding invitations to each guest as per local Palestinian custom, in this rousing family drama from Annemarie Jacir. (imdb)

Ahmet, as a soldier in the regular Syrian army, witnesses the cover-up of massacres and torture conducted to repress the civil unrest. He and his wife Leila try to flee through the war zone to bring testimony to the world. (imdb)

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?

A couple decide to leave the toxic pollution of their home city of Beirut, hoping to build a utopian existence in a pristine home in the mountains. (imdb)

Halim and Mina who run a traditional caftan store in one of Morocco's oldest medinas. In order to keep up with demanding customers, they hire a talented young man as an apprentice. Slowly Mina realises how much her husband is moved by his presence.

Amira, a paediatric surgeon, performs a life-saving operation during the darkest days of the conflict. Through an unexpected twist of fate, she and her daughter become central characters in a dangerous tale that intricately interweaves the lives of five families spanning four continents and redefines all of their existences. Versions of this story continue to repeat themselves over the centuries. For this reason, Shakespeare aptly named this plight “The Strangers’ Case”

An inter-generational epic chronicling the lives of three generations of a Palestinian family and tracing the passage of trauma to each.

France, XIIth Century. A mysterious Arabic stranger who vowed not to kill has to save a kidnapped girl and avenge an oppressed village. On his way: a powerful and decadent Lord - a former Crusades hero - and his knights. (imdb)