While Israel proceeds with its war against Hamas in Gaza, Israeli and Palestinian documentary filmmakers are engaging in a cultural competition on the silver screen as both sides vie for global attention to share their points of view.
Stories about the conflict and its fallout, ranging from the events of Oct. 7, 2023, to the subsequent anti-Israel campus protests, are often divisive because they tackle such a politically charged topic — and Israeli and Palestinian films cover the conflict differently.
While Israeli films focus on the brutality of Palestinian terrorism and the innocent people murdered, kidnapped, raped, and tortured by groups like Hamas — particularly during the Oct 7 terrorist attack — Palestinian films focus on perceived injustices and claims of oppression at the hand of Israel.
“Palestinian films tend to focus on the injustices and hardships caused by Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the plight of Palestinians who were forced into exile in 1948, 1967, and later wars,” Dr. Drew Paul, a professor specialized in Palestinian cinema at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, told the Washington Examiner.
Whereas, he said, “Israeli films tend to focus on the effects on Israeli society of Palestinian suicide bombings and other attacks,” including Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack on southern Israel.
One such documentary, The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue, tells the story of retired Israeli general Noam Tibon who saved his family from Hamas terrorists invading their kibbutz during the Oct. 7 attack.
The film recently gain massive attention when the Toronto International Film Festival initially pulled its screening, citing the filmmakers’ failure to obtain legal clearance of footage filmed by Hamas and pointing to the risk of disruptive protests at the festival.
Allegations of censorship quickly abounded on social media, forcing TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey to promptly reinstate the film’s invitation in a complete course reversal within 24 hours. Bailey denied the pro-Israel story was censored but apologized for “any pain this situation may have caused.”
The Road Between Us likely benefited from the international backlash against TIFF, considering the film’s Sept. 10 screening sold out all of the venue’s nearly 1,800 seats.
This incident illustrates how large film festivals can struggle to appeal to filmmakers with dueling narratives in a balanced manner, which is why they generally feature different perspectives in the name of artistic expression.
“We tend to see the major festivals [such as TIFF or the Berlinale] attempt to represent multiple perspectives and not explicitly take one side or the other,” Paul said.
Film festivals, however, are not immune to making errors perceived as favoring one particular perspective regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
When the Cannes Film Festival categorized Let It Be Morning as an Israeli movie in 2021, the feature film’s primarily Arab and Palestinian cast boycotted the festival in objection to the classification. Cannes’s decision was likely influenced by the film’s confusing national identity: It was directed by an Israeli filmmaker and the novel on which the film is based was written in Hebrew by a Palestinian author.
Although Israeli and Palestinian perspectives tend to conflict, there is some room for collaboration between both sides.
“We do see a fair number of Israeli films that consider the possibility of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians,” Paul noted.
No Other Land is perhaps the most well-known example of this type of collaboration, given it won an Academy Award for Best Documentary earlier this year. Directed by a mix of Palestinian and Israeli activists, the production chronicles the destruction of a Palestinian community in Judaea and Samaria, or the West Bank, through Israeli military activity between 2019 and 2023. It was notably denounced by Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar for misrepresenting and “slandering” the Jewish country.
Despite its widespread critical acclaim and numerous award wins, No Other Land still can’t find a mainstream distributor in the United States since its February 2024 world premiere at the Berlinale. By contrast, October 8, which documents the rampant antisemitism seen on university and college campuses since Oct. 7, found its distributor in December 2024 after premiering at a Creative Artists Agency event two months prior. It had a theatrical release in March.
October 8 director Wendy Sachs said while a few companies were interested in her movie, she faced some struggles in ultimately acquiring a U.S. distributor because antisemitism is a sensitive topic.
“There’s just an antipathy, certainly in the independent film community, to any types of these Oct. 7-related films or anything at all sympathetic to the attack on Israel and to Jews,” she told the Washington Examiner. “Hollywood has an allergic reaction to a lot of those films.”
Sachs added October 8 also got rejected from major film festivals, although it has played at smaller, more specialized festivals like the Jerusalem Film Festival and the Miami Jewish Film Festival.
Distribution is just one part of the challenge for Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers. They may also experience trouble with funding.
Palestinian filmmakers frequently face financial struggles, as the Palestinian Authority provides fewer resources than the Israeli government. The lack of state support forces Palestinians to go to private organizations or European countries for funding. The independent Palestine Film Institute launched a fund in May to help fill the void left by the Palestinian government.
Meanwhile, Israel has a more established film industry and provides state support for filmmakers through the Israel Film Fund and similar organizations.
“While some Palestinian filmmakers who have Israeli citizenship have been able to utilize this support, this is controversial and not available to Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, or the diaspora,” Paul said.
Some Israeli filmmakers face a different funding challenge than their Palestinian counterparts. To receive state funding, they must agree to not disparage the country or its military so that Israel’s standing on the global stage is not tarnished by its own citizens. Under these guidelines, films that tackle Israeli occupation in Palestinian territories would be prohibited.
There is also the added pressure from pro-Palestinian activists who protest screenings of pro-Israel films, which often require a security presence to deter such disruptions. Sachs has explained her first-hand experience with this phenomenon on social media, noting how a No Other Land screening at the same Toronto theater where her film played did not need security.
“When we premiered at AMC Lincoln Square [in New York City] on March 13, there was chatter online with the NYPD counterterrorism unit that there were going to be protests,” Sachs said. “We had to hire private security for me and for the donors, for people who are coming, because people were really spooked. That does not happen for the Palestinian films, as far as I know.”
There are no major reported instances of pro-Israel activists protesting No Other Land screenings, although there were planned pro-Israel protests that canceled a May screening in Melbourne, Australia, weeks in advance.
Moreover, Israel is undergoing waning support the longer the war persists and people get fatigued. A recent Gallup poll found only 32% of Americans backed Israel’s military campaign in Gaza against a 60% disapproval rating, however according to a separate Gallup survey, more Americans sympathize with Israelis 46%, than sympathize with Gazans, 33%.
“There is evidence to suggest in recent years U.S. public opinion has shifted in a pro-Palestinian direction, although a plurality of the public still considers itself pro-Israel,” Paul said. “After a brief bump in support for Israel after October 7, the brutality of the Israeli war on Gaza and coverage of it has certainly garnered more sympathy for the Palestinian perspective.”
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The professor concluded it’s difficult to determine how much of a role film has played in Americans’ perception of the Israel-Hamas war.
Regardless of whether these films are changing minds or reinforcing existing beliefs, their growing international influence underscores cinema’s enduring power to generate public discourse, even in the face of war.