Holot (Hebrew for "Sands") is a detention center in the middle of the Israeli desert that was built to quickly address an influx of African asylum seekers, mostly refugees from Eritrea and Sudan. The migrants in Holot have no legal status in Israel, and the government seems to have no plan to grant them asylum, so they remain in an indefinite state of limbo. Into this Beckettian reality enter theater director Chen Alon and filmmaker Avi Mograbi. Their...

Feminine wisdom, passed through the ages, connects the inner lives of a group of women providing them with a sense of belonging. Through intimate verite footage, the film illustrates that which is invisible to the eye: The thoughts, memories and dreams of these mothers, sisters and wives as they grapple daily with past traumas and future uncertainty. It is, through the inspiration of drama from long ago and the creation of a social group, that Antigone,...

Syria: Seven years. Six million displaced people. The biggest humanitarian emergency of our time. The Syrian refugee crisis remains at the forefront of the global consciousness: as statistics, as photographs, as a bargaining chip in international politics. But inside the camps real people settle in to a life in limbo. WATAN (Homeland) explores two of the biggest refugee camps in Jordan - Zaatari and Azraq - along with neighbouring city Jerash, to...

In this **Oscar**-nominated documentary, filmmaker Talal Derki traveled to Syria where he gained the trust of a radical Islamist family, sharing their daily life for over two years. His camera focuses primarily on the children, providing an extremely rare insight into what it means to grow up with a father whose only dream is to establish an Islamic caliphate. Osama and his brother Ayman both love and admire their father and obey his words, but while...

Nineteen-year-old Baset is the goalkeeper for the Syrian national soccer team. When revolution breaks out the charismatic young man becomes an iconic protest leader and singer. Osama is a 24-year-old media activist and pacifist wielding his camera to document the revolution. But when their beloved Homs becomes a bombed-out ghost town, these two peaceful protesters take up arms and transform into renegade insurgents, with devastating results.

Sara is one of the pioneers and the team’s coach. She struggles not only with a lack of money, support and facilities, but also with bureaucratic problems: because she comes from South Sudan, the authorities make it difficult for her to stay in Khartoum. The filmmakers follow her and other team members in their daily lives, in surprisingly close detail. The women are outspoken about their opinions and talk—sometimes laughingly—about the violence...

LITTLE GANDHI is a powerful documentary that follows the life of iconic Syrian peace activist Ghiyath Matar, who became internationally known as “Little Gandhi” for his initiative of facing down violent government security forces with flowers and bottles of water. Matar was a key organizer of peaceful protests in his hometown of Daraya against one of the most vicious regimes in the 21st century, inspiring people worldwide. His brutal torture and...

Filmed over five years, CAPTAINS OF ZAATARI follows two best friends, Mahmoud and Fawzi, refugees from Syria who now live in the Zaatari camp in Jordan. As teeneragers and like many boys their age, they dream of becoming professional football players. Despite being locked in a space that has no facilities or opportunity for training, they remain hopeful and full of dreams. Their stories take an unexpected turn when Aspire Academy, one of the world’s...

2018 **Academy Award** nominee for Best Documentary Feature, Syrian filmmaker Feras Fayyad’s breathtaking work – a searing example of boots-on-the-ground reportage – follows the efforts of the internationally recognized White Helmets; ordinary citizens who are the first to rush towards military strikes in the hope of saving lives. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema - Documentary at the **Sundance Film Festival**. Nominated for the...

A Sudanese immigrant to the UK returns to her homeland to understand why the seemingly racially harmonious country of her memories has become the scene of one of the worst instances of ethnic cleansing in recent history. Director Taghreed Elsanhouri says that she made this film "out of a passionate belief that I was uniquely qualified to tell a story of race because as a northerner in Sudan I know what it is to belong to a dominant group and as a...