As a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, Evan Kleinman always felt a trip to Poland, the birthplace of his grandparents, might be the key to gaining a better understanding of what they endured. In this first-person documentary, Kleinman and his family journey to where their family was meant to be destroyed. While confronting the horrors of their past, they ultimately discover the great miracle of their existence today and leave a marker behind that tells the world they are still here.
Fire Lines tells the story of the Palestinian and Israeli firefighters who join forces to battle the historic Mount Carmel forest fire of December 2010.
From her house window in the settlement of Maon, on the occupied territories, Adi gazes at the hill where she and her late husband Dov Dribben dreamed of living. Dov began building their home on the hill, threatening the Palestinian inhabitants of the area, and eventually killed in a confrontation with them. Dov soon turned into a symbol amongst other settlers. His thirty-year-old widow, Adi, was left to care alone for their four children. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict as it is reflected in the Maon events serves as the background for the changes that Adi goes through. Following Dov’s death, she is torn apart by her commitment to ideology on one hand and her private life on the other.
This Israeli-made feature was originally titled Kol Mamzer Melech. Dramatizing an actual event that occurred during the Six-Day War of 1967, the film top-bills Italian actress Pier Angeli, but the central character is a pilot named Ralphi Cohen (played by Oded Kotler). Hoping to bring peace to his country, Cohen takes it upon himself to fly his plane towards Egypt, there to hopefully commiserate with Abdel Nasser. Shot down en route, Cohen finds himself halfway between the Egyptian and Israeli armies; he’d like to get home, but he’d also like to retain the use of his life.
Lifta, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, is the only Arab village abandoned in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that has not been completely destroyed or repopulated by Jews. Its ruins are now threatened by an Israeli development plan that would convert it into an upscale Jewish neighborhood.
Filmmaker Menachem Daum – an Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn – sets out to discover the story behind the headlines. He meets Yacoub, a Palestinian who was expelled from Lifta and now leads the struggle to save the haunting ruins of his village from Israeli plans to build luxury villas on the site. Learning that Lifta was once a place where Jews and Arabs got along, Menachem joins Yacoub’s campaign in the hopes that Lifta can serve as a place of reflection and reconciliation. This leads to a climactic encounter between a Holocaust survivor and a Nakba refugee amidst the ruins of Lifta.
Slipping through the predawn darkness over highways, through traffic and across the border, Palestinian construction workers go to work clandestinely in Israel every day. Haar’s raw, handheld photography follows workers who build their own border shanty community to enter Israel more easily, with no choice but to risk their lives simply to earn a living
A rare look into Palestinian life in contemporary Syria. Born on the Golan Heights, best friends Ezat and Bayan go on a journey to study in Syria. What starts out as an adventure to an unknown homeland leads to a search of identity and belonging.
