🔗 Share this article

International backing for Palestine’s causes is growing, including Hollywood, where thousands of industry professionals have signed a commitment to avoid Israeli film groups considered complicit in the conflict in the Gaza Strip, and well-known celebrities are supporting films that focus on the Palestinian people’s lived reality.

Yet, Palestinian-produced films still face challenges to obtain release and achieve exposure – even after a significant Oscars victory recently. To showcase the Palestinian vibrant heritage of film-making, we asked prominent Palestinian directors and entertainers to share their top Palestinian films.

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

Director Cherien Dabis’s film All That’s Left of You, which debuted recently at the Sundance Film Festival, is a rare film, unflinching and memorable. By telling the narrative of a single Palestinian clan, from its origins in pre-Nakba the city of Jaffa through decades of displacement, it does not just tell a story – it honors a heritage.

The cinematography are rich and transportive. Every shot feels intentional, every frame a memory – the citrus orchards of Jaffa, the streets of Nablus, the isolation of exile. The performances are unforgettable, showcasing the director’s remarkable versatility alongside three generations of the Bakri family – the family of performers most associated with Palestinian film. They are layered, subtle and deeply authentic.

The most striking aspect is how smoothly the movie shifts between time periods without ever losing its narrative thread. Every period of the Palestinian story is brought to life with remarkable detail, both in imagery and in feeling. The direction is masterful in that regard, leading you through years with precision and sensitivity.

By the end, I was brought to tears. All That’s Left of You isn’t just about the past, it’s about the invisible ways it influences who we are. It’s a movie that stays with you – not because of spectacle, but because of honesty.

• Mo Amer is a Palestinian-American actor and comic and the maker of a well-known Netflix series.

‘A Groundbreaking Masterpiece’: Cherien Dabis on Divine Intervention

A sunglasses-clad Palestinian woman defiantly walks through a checkpoint. Israeli soldiers look on, guns pointed, confused. Her beauty subdues them and brings the watchtower to collapse. It’s an memorable scene from director Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention that has stayed with me ever since I initially watched the movie. I was a second-year postgraduate cinema student at Columbia University when it premiered in the United States in 2003. I remember being stunned by its power, its resistance, and its sheer boldness.

At a time when the majority of Palestinian cinema tended to be the serious or sad, the director created a new path. Through dark humor, straight-faced performance, and near-silent observation, he portrayed the bizarre absurdity of existence under occupation. Playing the movie’s mute protagonist personally, he placed his own perspective at the core of the narrative. That decision felt radical. His presence was calm and understated, which only heightened the stress all around him.

Divine Intervention is both deeply personal and highly political. Its imagery is global, yet rooted in the fractured existence of Palestinian identity. The filmmaker turns separation, displacement and resistance into something approaching art. The outcome is poignant, dreamlike, sometimes funny and always painfully truthful.

There was nothing remotely like it in Palestinian film at the time. There still isn’t. It remains, for me, the most innovative and creative Palestinian movie ever created.

• Cherien Dabis is a Palestinian American director, screenwriter, film producer and actor, whose latest film is a selected entry for the Oscars.

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

For me, a outstanding film needs to do two aspects. It needs to provide an experience that’s unfamiliar, feeling and intelligent. It needs to offer me something I’ve been missing – a point of view that contradicts my belief system, a way to consider issues outside my own world, a view to a distinct time and location. In short, I need to feel enlightened, in spirit and intellectually.

Second, it needs to move me with its talent. A ability that is not focused trying to impress but is employed to open my eyes to an idea deeper.

The movie To a Land Unknown, which was launched last year, is precisely this kind of film. Created by Mahdi Fleifel, it is a story about a pair of Palestinian companions searching for better lives as displaced persons in Greece.

To a Land Unknown allowed me to experience what it’s like to be a at-risk refugee, in a foreign land, where all factors works in opposition to your efforts to leave the ghetto. It demonstrated me that in some cases, although conditions outside your influence work to hinder you, you personally can still become your own worst enemy. And its interplay between content and cinematic style astonished me in its artistry.

In To a Land Unknown, the Palestinian cause has gained a talent that will support its cause without shedding a one ounce of blood.

• Hany Abu-Assad is a Palestinian-Dutch director, writer and twice Oscar contender for his acclaimed works.

‘Even Livestock Are Seen as a Danger’: Basel Adra on The Wanted 18

Among my most loved Palestinian movies is The Wanted 18. It recounts the narrative of Palestinian people in Beit Sahour, a village near the city of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, during the initial uprising of the 1980s. It records their effort to {