Catalog Search Results
1) Omar
Language
Arabic
Description
Omar is accustomed to dodging surveillance bullets to cross the separation wall to visit his secret love Nadia. But occupied Palestine knows neither simple love nor clear-cut war. When Omar is captured after a deadly act of resistance, he falls into a cat-and-mouse game with the military police. Suspicion and betrayal jeopardize his longtime trust with his childhood friends, but it's soon evident that everything he does is for his love of Nadia.
Language
Arabic
Appears on list
Description
A widow pretends to be pregnant with a son to save her daughter and home from a relative exploiting Jordan's patriarchal inheritance laws. This thriller from the Cannes Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival is Jordan's Official Entry for Best International Film at the Academy Awards.
3) Wadjda
Language
Arabic
Description
Wadjda, a fun-loving 10-year-old girl living in Saudi Arabia, has her heart set on a beautiful new bicycle. However, her mother won't allow it, fearing repercussions from a society that sees bicycles as dangerous to a girl's virtue. Determined to turn her dreams into reality and buy the bike on her own, Wadjda uncovers the contradictions and opportunities ingrained in her world. Hilarious, heartbreaking and inspiring all at once, this groundbreaking...
Series
Language
Arabic
Description
Lalia (Mouna Hawa), Salma (Sana Jammelieh), and Nur (Shaden Kanboura) share an apartment in the vibrant heart of Tel Aviv. Lalia, a criminal lawyer with a wicked wit, loves to burn off her workday stress in the underground club scene. Salma, slightly more subdued, is a DJ and bartender. Nur is a younger, religious Muslim girl who moves into the apartment in order to study at the university. Nur is both intrigued and intimidated by her two sophisticated...
5) Ahlaam
Language
Arabic
Description
Presents the true stories of three Iraqi people who endured life in a psychiatric hospital in Baghdad during the Iraq War and then were in the streets after their hospital is decimated. The film was shot in Baghdad in 2004. The Iraqi filmmaker had a camera in one hand and an AK-47 in the other. His crew was beaten and lined up to be shot by insurgents, the 14-year old boom boy was shot in the leg, and someone from the cast was kidnapped. Somehow the...
Language
Arabic
Appears on list
Description
"In his epic and engaging documentary of life in Baghdad before and after the 2003 US invasion, Iraqi filmmaker Abbas Fahdel acquaints us with a moving portrait of his own family and friends as they struggle in the advent and the uncertain aftermath of war. Displaying courage, grace and even humor after decades of deprivation through conflict, international sanctions, and totalitarian oppression, their optimism and determination is both inspiring...
10) Daresalam
Language
Arabic
Description
In a small Central African village, boyhood friends Djimi and Koni have come of age under a post-colonial government that levies crippling taxes and legally robs local farmers of their meager crops. When impulsive Koni savagely attacks a visiting government official, the resulting massacre forces the two friends on a journey that will transform them from boys into men.
Language
Arabic
Description
Documentary in three parts. Offers a series of intimate, passionately-felt portraits: A fatherless 11-year-old is apprenticed to the domineering owner of a Baghdad garage; Sadr followers in two Shiite cities rally for regional elections while enforcing Islamic law at the point of a gun; a family of Kurdish farmers welcomes the U.S. presence, which has allowed them a measure of freedom previously denied. American director James Longley spent more...
12) Voices of Iraq
Language
Arabic
Description
Documents the lives, hopes, and dreams of Iraqi mothers, children, teachers, sheiks, and insurgents during the upheaval of a nation being born.
Author
Language
Arabic
Description
On the outskirts of a town thirty miles from Istanbul, a master well digger and his young apprentice are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating without luck, the two develop a filial bond neither has known before -- not the poor middle-aged bachelor nor the middle-class boy whose father disappeared after being arrested for politically subversive activities. The pair come to depend on each other and exchange...
16) El color de los olivos = =: The color of olives : una historia de la vida cotidiana en Palestina
Language
Arabic
Description
Como muchas familias palestinas, los Amers viven rodeados por el infame muro en Cisjordania. Su vida cotidiana está dominada por puertas electrificadas, candados y la presencia constante de soldados. A través de una lente sensible, descubrimos el mundo privado de ocho miembros de la familia. En el transcurrir de sus días se revelan sus luchas constantes y los pequeños detalles de su vida: incluyendo árboles de olivo, dos burros pequeños y las...
Language
Arabic
Description
Reveals the dire reality of foreign domestic workers in Middle Eastern countries such as Lebanon. The documentary offers an intimate insight into the private lives of employers, agents, and maids. Laws create a legal structure of inequality and power imbalance that encourages corruption and abuse. Sexism and the patriarchal system discriminate against Lebanese women, in turn, perpetuating abuse against foreign domestic workers. Exposing a modern form...
18) Budrus
Language
Arabic
Description
They not only save the village, but the Barrier is pushed back behind the Green Line into No Man's Land. In the process, Ayed and Iltezam unleash an inspiring, yet little-known, movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that is still gaining ground today. In an action-filled documentary featuring archival footage of this movement from its infancy, Budrus will inspire and challenge audiences worldwide.