Palestinian Cinema
A national cinema without a state — films that carry Palestinian stories from Paradise Now to The Present onto the world's screens.
Palestinian cinema emerged in the decades after the Nakba and developed into a distinct national cinema despite the absence of a state, studios, or steady funding. Directors such as Michel Khleifi (Wedding in Galilee, 1987) and Elia Suleiman established its international presence, blending realism, satire, and the surreal condition of statelessness.
A new generation brought Palestinian features to the Oscars and the major festivals. Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now (2005) and Omar (2013) were both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Annemarie Jacir’s Wajib (2017), Suleiman’s It Must Be Heaven (2019), and Darin J. Sallam’s Farha (2021) — a feature about the Nakba — extended that reach. Farah Nabulsi’s short The Present (2020), about a father and daughter crossing a checkpoint, was nominated for an Oscar and won a BAFTA.
Palestinian documentary has been equally vital, from the archive-reclaiming work of filmmakers like Kamal Aljafari to the frontline testimony of 5 Broken Cameras (2011), nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Together these films function as a counter-archive: a record, in the face of erasure, that Palestine exists on screen.