From the Middle East & North Africa
A mix of narrative and documentary, this collection of films from the Middle East and North Africa runs the gamut from love stories like Empire M and A Tale of Love and Desire, to hard-hitting political documentaries with Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said.
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Sound of Torture
Directed by Keren Shayo • Documentary • 2013 • 58 minutes
Since 2006 when Europe closed its borders, human trafficking has burgeoned in Egypt’s Sinai Desert, where Eritrean asylum seekers and refugees heading north to Israel are kidnapped, held hostage, and tortured by Bedouin smugglers demandin...
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Tadmor
Directed by Monika Borgmann and Lokman Slim • Documentary • 2016 • 103 minutes
Amidst the popular uprising in Syria that begin in 2011, a group of former Lebanese detainees of the Assad regime decides to break their long-held silence about the horrific years they spent imprisoned in Tadmor (Palm...
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Tahrir: Liberation Square
Directed by Stefano Savona • Documentary • 2011 • 90 minutes
'Soon after the first reports came about the occupation of Tahrir Square, filmmaker Stefano Savona headed for Cairo, where he stayed, amidst the ever-growing masses in the Square, for weeks. His film introduces us to young Egyptians su...
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Mirages
Directed by Olivier Dury • Documentary • 2008 • 46 minutes
Every day, thousands of miles from here, dozens of people are driven by an incredible sense of hope to set out with the intention of arriving in Europe. During the first few days of their crossing from Agadez to Djanet, from Niger into A...
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Disturbing the Peace
Directed by Stephen Apkon, Andrew Young • Documentary • 2017 • 86 minutes
In a world torn by conflict — in a place where the idea of peace has been abandoned — an energy of determined optimism emerges. When someone is willing to disturb the status quo and stand for the dream of a free and secure...
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The Rabbi's Cat
Directed by Joann Sfar & Antoine Delesvaux • Animation • With Mathieu Amalric, Hafsia Herzi, François Damiens, Eric Elmosnino • 2011 • 80 minutes
Set in Algeria in the 1930s, THE RABBI'S CAT adapts Joann Sfar's best-selling graphic tale of a sharp-tongued feline philosopher. When a cat belonging...
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Mimosas
Directed by Oliver Laxe • Drama • With Ahmed Hammoud, Shakib Ben Omar, Said Aagli • 2016 • 93 minutes
Winner of the Critics’ Week Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Oliver Laxe’s stunning new film, Mimosas, is a breathtakingly shot Western that follows a mysterious caravan carrying a dying...
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Ziyara
Directed by Simone Bitton • Documentary • 2021 • 99 minutes
Celebrated documentary filmmaker Simone Bitton (Ben Barka, Wall, Rachel) returns with her most personal film to date. Inviting viewers on a cinematic pilgrimage to her homeland of Morocco, Bitton explores her Jewish roots through the sp...
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Tinghir Jerusalem
Directed by Kamal Hachkar • Documentary • 2011 • 86 minutes
In TINGHIR-JERUSALEM, filmmaker and historian Kamal Hachkar goes in search of a community that has vanished - and confronts fundamental questions of his own identity in the process. A Berber Muslim born in Tinghir, Morocco and raised in...
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Naila and the Uprising
Directed by Julia Bacha • Documentary • With Naila Ayesh, Jamal Zakout, Roni Ben Efrat • 2017 • 59 minutes
When a nationwide uprising breaks out in 1987, a woman in Gaza must choose between love, family, and freedom. Undaunted, she embraces all three, joining a clandestine network of women in a ...
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Edward Said: The Last Interview
Directed by Mike Dibb • Documentary • 2004 • 114 minutes
Producer: D. D. Guttenplan; Interviewer: Charles Glass
Edward Said, University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, was one of the most important literary critics of the late 20th century, and for many y...
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First Passion
Directed by Philippe Baron • Documentary • 2010 • 52 minutes
The first cinematic depiction of the life of Jesus, Sidney Olcott's 1912 film FROM THE MANGER TO THE CROSS is the only movie ever shot in the places described by the New Testament. The fourth feature-length film release in the history ...
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Stony Paths
Directed by Arnaud Khayadjanian • Documentary • 2015 • 60 minutes
Following in his great-grandfather's footsteps, Arnaud Khayadjanian undertakes a long trek across Anatolia to better understand the Armenian Genocide and honor its victims. First-hand accounts from his relatives and an old paintin...