In our Kawalis episode with prolific documentary film director Carol Mansour, we talked about her recently released documentary “Aida Returns”, and asked her to share other Palestinian film recommendations. Here’s what Carol chose:

Dégradé: Arab Nasser, Tarzan Nasser (2016)

A hot summer’s day in the Gaza Strip. Today the electricity is on. Christine’s beauty salon is heaving with female clients: a bride-to-be, a pregnant woman, a bitter divorcée, a devout woman and a pill-popping addict. But their day of leisure is disrupted when gunfire breaks out across the street. A gangland family has stolen the lion from Gaza’s only zoo, and Hamas has decided it’s time to settle old scores. Stuck in the salon, with the prospect of death drawing ever nearer, the women start to unravel. How will the day end? Will they lose their lives for the sake of “liberating the lion”? (via LetterBoxd)

200 meters, Ameen Nayfeh (2020)

Mustafa lives on the Palestinian-controlled side of the wall, and Salwa and their children on the occupations’s side. One day he gets the call every parent dreads: his son has been in an accident and is in the hospital. He will do anything to reach his son, and after being denied access through the checkpoint on a technicality, Mustafa embarks upon a journey to cross the border illegally. (via Human Rights Watch Film Festival)

Jaffa, the Orange Clockwork, Eyal Sivan (2009)

Jaffa, the orange’s clockwork narrates the visual history of the famous citrus fruit originated from Palestine and known worldwide for centuries as “Jaffa oranges”. The history of the orange is the history of this land. Through photography and cinema, poetry, paintings, workers of the citruses’ industry and historians, memory and present mythologies, Palestinians and Israelis cross and combine. (Via dafilms)

Foragers, Joumana Manaa (2022)

Foragers depicts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine with wry humor and a meditative pace.  Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, it employs fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs. Following the plants from the wild to the kitchen, from the chases between the foragers and the nature patrol, to courtroom defenses, the film captures the joy and knowledge embodied in these traditions alongside their resilience to the prohibitive law. (Via Jumana Manna)

A World Not Ours, Mahdi Fleifel (2012)

Imbued with nostalgia and striking a wide range of emotional notes, filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel travels to the Lebanese refugee camp of Ain El Helweh to explore how the camp's displaced people use the World Cup series to articulate their own ideas of home, community, victory and hope (TIFF 2012). (Via British Council Films)

Tantura, Alon Schwarz (2022)

Director Alon Schwarz revisits former Israeli soldiers of the Alexandroni Brigade as well as Palestinian residents in an effort to re-examine what happened in Tantura and explore why the Nakba is taboo in Israeli society. The ex-soldiers, now in their 90s, recall unsettling acts of war while disquietly pausing at points they either don’t remember or won’t speak of. Audio from Katz’s 20-year-old interviews cuts through the silence of self-preservation and exposes the ways in which power, silencing, and protected narratives can sculpt history. (Via Reel Peak Films)

5 Broken Cameras, Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi (2012)

A Palestinian farmer with a home video camera shoots a local protest against the building of an Israeli “security fence” in his village, and finds himself the official documentarian of five years worth of footage of the struggle. (Via BFI)

The Wanted 18, Amer Shomali & Paul Cowann (2014)

Through a clever mix of stop-motion animation and interviews, The Wanted 18 recreates an astonishing true story: the Israeli army's pursuit of 18 cows, whose independent milk production on a Palestinian collective farm was declared "a threat to the national security of the state of Israel." In response to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, a group of people from the town of Beit Sahour decide to buy 18 cows and produce their own milk as a co-operative. Their venture is so successful that the collective farm becomes a landmark, and the cows local celebrities—until the Israeli army takes note and declares that the farm is an illegal security threat. Consequently, the dairy is forced to go underground, the cows continuing to produce their "Intifada milk" with the Israeli army in relentless pursuit. (via Human Rights Watch Film Festival)

The Time That Remains, Elia Sleiman (2009)

Tragic elements pervade The Time That Remains. The third part of Elia Suleiman’s trilogy, which began with Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996) and Divine Intervention (2002) and charts the story of Palestinian dispossession and displacement since 1948, is his most ambitious effort to date. Beginning in 1948 on the day his hometown of Nazareth officially surrendered to the Israeli army and continuing through to the most recent Intifada, the film artfully interweaves the personal and the political. Suleiman even used his own parents’ diaries for inspiration while writing the screenplay. (Via BFI)

Gaza Mon Amour, Arab Nasser & Tarzan Nasser (2021)

Sixty-year-old Gazan fisherman Issa is secretly in love with Siham, a woman who works at the market. One night Issa discovers an ancient phallic statue of Apollo in his fishing nets and takes it home under the cover of darkness. As Issa works up the confidence to talk to Siham, the Hamas authorities find out about the shameful statue. Will he succeed in declaring his love to Siham before their net closes in on him? (Via Bristol Palestinian Film Festival)

Omar, Hany Abou-Assaad (2013)

Omar, a young baker, is interrogated by Israeli intelligence after a soldier is killed. He is then tortured and offered a deal to trade his freedom in return for his help in capturing the soldier’s killer. (Via Mad Distribution)

Ghost Hunting, Raed Andoni (2017)

For more than 25 years, one image has been haunting director Raed Andoni – that of a boy (18), head covered with a bag and handcuffed, sitting inside a prison yard. The same sounds always accompany this image: metal doors opening and footsteps slowly approaching. Through the lower part of the bag, the boy can see a man wearing white sneakers walking away. A survivor of the prison experience himself, Raed has fragmented memories that he can’t distinguish as real or imaginary.

In order to confront the ghost that haunts him, he decides to rebuild the Al-Moscobiya investigation center in an empty warehouse near Ramallah. A casting call for former prisoners results in an eclectic group of construction workers, a blacksmith, an architect and an artist. As they build a copy of their former jail based on their own memories, Raed digs deep into their memories, triggered by reenactments and roleplaying. For this purpose, he focuses on the story of Mohammad (50), whom the resistance to the investigation methods – stoked by laughter and rebellion – made him a hero among Palestinians. (Via Akka Films)

If you missed our interview with Carol, watch it here or listen to it wherever you find your podcasts.

Films To Watch From Palestine: Carol Mansour's Recommendations