CODEPINK has compiled a list of movies, tv shows, interviews and media that will educate, inspire and activate us to take action for a FREE Palestine! Get some popcorn and friends and let's watch!
Gaza Summer School Series!
Inspired by the courageous campus encampments that have swept across colleges nationwide, CODEPINK presents the Gaza Summer School Series, a transformative education series that will empower you to become a powerful advocate for Palestine. Each recorded session offers an in-depth knowledge and vital skills to make a real impact. Led by dynamic leaders, each session includes a 30-minute deep dive into the history and current realities of Palestine, followed by a dynamic 30-minute skills training to arm you with the tools to drive change in your community. Watch Now!
The Right To Boycott
The Right To Boycott is a short film produced by the Freedom2Boycott New York State Coalition, now available online! The 5-minute video sounds the alarm on laws intended to take away Americans’ First Amendment right to boycott Israel. As masses throughout the US and around the world are organizing to put pressure on the Israeli government to end its assault and siege of Gaza, the struggle to defend the right to boycott is more crucial than ever.
5 Broken Cameras (2011)
Winner of a 2012 Sundance Film Festival award and the 2013 International Emmy Award. Nominated for a 2013 Academy Award.
When his fourth son, Gibreel, is born, Emad, a Palestinian villager, gets his first camera. In his village, Bil’in, a separation barrier is being built and the villagers start to resist this decision. For more than five years, Emad films the struggle, which is led by two of his best friends, alongside filming how Gibreel grows. Very soon it affects his family and his own life. Daily arrests and night raids scare his family; his friends, brothers and himself are either shot or arrested. One camera after another is shot at or smashed. Each of the 5 cameras tells part of his story.
Farha (1 hr 31min)
After persuading her father to continue her education in the city, a Palestinian girl's dream is shattered by the harrowing developments of the Nakba.
The Occupation of the American Mind (NR, 85 mins)
Narrated by legendary musician and activist Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame and featuring leading experts on American media, the film looks at efforts by the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and pro-Israel pressure groups to shape positive news coverage of Israel and deflect attention away from its prolonged military occupation of Palestinian territory.
Learn more, watch the trailer, and purchase the film online at the film’s website.
Where Should the Birds Fly (NR, 58 mins)
Where Should the Birds Fly is the first film about Gaza made by Palestinians living the reality of Israel’s siege and blockade of this tiny enclave. It is the story of two young women, survivors of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead. Mona Samouni, now 12 years old and the filmmaker, Fida Qishta, now 27, represent the spirit and future of Palestinians.The film is a visual documentation of the Goldstone Report. But it is so much more. It reveals the strength and hope, the humanity and humor that flourishes among the people of Gaza. Few films document so powerfully and personally the impact of modern warfare and sanctions on a civilian population.The film itself breaks the blockade. Filmmakers in Gaza have never had the opportunity to make a full-length, professional documentary of their reality. Fida Qishta, born and raised in Rafah, Gaza, began her filmmaking career as a wedding videographer, and soon moved on to working with international human rights observers in Gaza, documenting day to day life under siege. Her commentary on the siege was published in The International Herald Tribune. Her video reports of Operation Cast Lead were published widely including in the UK newspaper The Guardian and in their weekly news magazine, The Observer.
Learn more, watch the trailer, and purchase an online version of the film at the film’s website.
Gaza Fights For Freedom
This debut feature film by Abby Martin, in collaboration with Palestinian journalists, shows you Gaza’s protest movement like you’ve never seen before. Filmed during the height of the Great March of Return protests, it features riveting footage of the ongoing demonstrations against the Israeli siege. The documentary tells the story of Gaza past and present, showing rare archival footage that explains the history never acknowledged by mass media. You hear from victims of the sniper massacre, including journalists, medics and the family of internationally-acclaimed paramedic Razal al-Najjar. At its core, GAZA FIGHTS FOR FREEDOM is a comprehensive indictment of the Israeli military for war crimes, and a stunning cinematic portrayal of Palestinians’ heroic resistance.
The Wanted 18
Palestinians in Beit Sahour start a local dairy farm during the First Intifada as a form of nonviolent resistance, hiding a herd of 18 cows from Israeli occupation forces when the dairy collective was deemed a “threat to Israeli national security” in an attempt to squash the resistance.
Jenin Jenin
A documentary film of the events that took place in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002, as this massacre was part of a comprehensive invasion of the Israeli occupation on the West Bank, and through which it aimed to eliminate the Palestinian armed groups resisting the occupation, where Jenin witnessed the fiercest battles, during which he was martyred 50 Palestinians and dozens of homes were destroyed in the camp, while the occupation admitted the killing of 23 soldiers from its side.
Israelism
When two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel witness the brutal way Israel treats Palestinians, their lives take sharp left turns.
They join a movement of young American Jews battling the old guard to redefine Judaism’s relationship with Israel, revealing a deepening generational divide over modern Jewish identity.
Gaza Genocide: Can Humanity Survive This?
Defamation (Yoav Shamir)
Defamation is a 2009 documentary film by Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir. It examines antisemitism, the way perceptions of antisemitism affect Israeli and U.S. politics, and explores the suggestion that claims of antisemitism are exaggerated or weaponized to stifle dissent against Israel. A major focus of the film is the Anti-Defamation League.
Checkpoints (Yoav Shamir)
Documentarian Yoav Shamir captures the frustration and humiliation that Palestinian travelers face on a routine basis as they encounter the imposing checkpoints manned by Israeli soldiers. Without narration or explanations, Shamir simply turns on his camera to record the different scenes as they unfold.
Gaza mon amor, Gaza,
An old fisherman falls in love with Siham, a woman who works at the market, and decides he wants to finally get married. One day, he finds an ancient statue of Apollo in his fishing nets, a discovery that he feels will change his life.
Walled Off
Chronicling life under Israeli occupation, this documentary offers an intimate look at Palestinians' fight for freedom through creative resistance and challenges media narratives perpetuating biased coverage of the conflict.
The Present
Yusef and his young daughter set out in the West Bank to buy his wife a gift on their wedding anniversary.
Wedding in Galilee
The mayor (Mohamad Ali El Akili) of a West Bank village wants his son (Yussef Abu Warda) to adhere to Palestinian tradition in his upcoming wedding. The trouble is, custom conflicts with the curfew put in place by the Israeli military.
When I Saw You (Lamma shoftak)
In a refugee camp of tens of thousands of people, a young boy and his mother make an attempt to cross the border from Palestine to Jordan in search of freedom.
Divine Intervention
Divine Intervention is a 2002 film by Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, which may be described as a surreal black comedy. The film consists largely of a series of brief interconnected sketches, but for the most part records a day in the life of a Palestinian living in Nazareth, whose girlfriend lives several checkpoints away in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Chronicle of Disappearance
The movie describes the filmmaker's return to Palestine after a long self-exile in New York.
The Evidence
“The Evidence” is a 52-minute documentary produced by Anadolu Agency (AA) that delves into the Israeli military’s assault on Gaza in response to the 7th October 2023 attack by the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas. This assault on Gaza, under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, marks the most extensive destruction and loss of life in the region since the Nakba, or the “Great Catastrophe,” in 1948. The film investigates alleged war crimes, including the use of banned weapons such as white phosphorus, and presents a detailed examination of the atrocities committed against the Palestinian population.
Like Twenty Impossibles
Occupied Palestine: A serene landscape now pockmarked by military checkpoints. When a Palestinian film crew decides to avert a closed checkpoint by taking a remote side road, the political landscape unravels, and the passengers are slowly taken apart by the mundane brutality of Israeli military occupation. Both a visual poem and a narrative about the fragmentation of a people, "like twenty impossibles", also questions the politics of filmmaking and the opportunism of artists.
Omar
Arrested after the death of an Israeli soldier, a Palestinian baker (Leem Lubany) agrees to work as an informant, but his true motives and alliances remain hidden.
3000 Nights
Layal is a newlywed Palestinian schoolteacher who is falsely accused and incarcerated in an Israeli prison, where she gives birth to a baby boy. Through her struggle to protect her child and her relationship with the prisoners around her, she finds the strength to stand up for herself and fight for her son.
Xenos
In 2010, Abu Eyad and other young Palestinian men from the Ain el-Helweh refugee camp in Lebanon traveled with smugglers through Syria and Turkey into Greece. Like so many other migrants, they came looking for a way into Europe but found themselves trapped in a country undergoing economic, political, and social collapse.
Habibi
A story of forbidden love, is a fiction feature set in Gaza. Two students in the West Bank are forced to return home to Gaza, where their love defies tradition. To reach his lover, Qays grafittis poetry across town. Habibi is a modern re-telling of the famous ancient Sufi parable Majnun Layla. The full Arabic title is ‘Habibi Rasak Kharban,’ which translates as “Darling, something’s wrong with your head.”
Salt of the Sea
Soraya, 28, decides to go to Palestine, where her family was exiled since 1948. Upon arrival, she seeks to reunite with her grandfather.
A World Not Ours
Three generations of a family live in exile in a refugee camp in southern Lebanon, trying their best to survive.
Children of Shatila
Filmmaker Mai Masri focuses on the daily lives of two children who have grown up in Beirut's Palestinian Shatila refugee camp.
A Man Returned
Reda's dreams of escaping the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain El-Helweh ended in failure after three years trapped in Greece. Now addicted to heroin, he returns to life in a camp being torn apart by internal strife and the war in Syria.
3 logical exits
A sociological meditation on the different exits that young Palestinians choose in order to cope with life in the refugee camps.
Ghost Hunting
Some Palestinians who were held in an Israeli detention center are assembled to re-enact their experience in an effort to heal.
Condom Lead
A young family take shelter in their home on the Gaza Strip during a brutal attack. Intimacy and love are jettisoned as the imminent dangers of war take the forefront.
Frontiers of Dreams and Fears
In this documentary, two Palestinian girls who both belong to the same cultural center maintain a tight friendship, despite the obstacles imposed by history and circumstance. Mona, 13, lives in a refugee camp in Beirut, while 14-year-old Manar resides in an Israeli-controlled camp near Bethlehem. The friends correspond via letters but can't see each other because of border regulations. Still, despite the risks, they decide to meet each other at the South Lebanon border.
Mars at Sunrise
A Palestinian artist (Ali Suliman) tells a Jewish-American poet (Haale Gafori) how he was tortured by a failed Israeli artist (Guy Elhanan) who wanted to turn him into an informant.