Best movies like Dawn

Five broken cameras – and each one has a powerful tale to tell. Embedded in the bullet-ridden remains of digital technology is the story of Emad Burnat, a farmer from the Palestinian village of Bil’in, which famously chose nonviolent resistance when the Israeli army encroached upon its land to make room for Jewish colonists. Emad buys his first camera in 2005 to document the birth of his fourth son, Gibreel. Over the course of the film, he becomes the peaceful archivist of an escalating struggle as olive trees are bulldozed, lives are lost, and a wall is built to segregate burgeoning Israeli settlements.

A thought-provoking documentary on the current and historical causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. political involvement.

In July 1976, an Air France flight from Tel-Aviv to Paris via Athens was hijacked and forced to land in Entebbe, Uganda. The Jewish passengers were separated and held hostage in demand to release many terrorists held in Israeli prisons. After much debate, the Israeli government sent an elite commando unit to raid the airfield and release the hostages.

Documentary of three gay men living in the Palestine-Israel region trade reflections on their situation and that of the region they live.

Based on a true Military operation by Israeli commandos. An Air France flight is hijacked by the PFLP. The plane has about 100 Jewish passengers. The plane is grounded in Uganda. Israelis would not negotiate. The movie then shows how less than 500 soldiers actually flew so far and rescued the passengers in one of the most successful Military operations in history. The only casualty for Israeli soldiers was Lt. Col. Jonathan "Yoni" Netanyahu..

When a couple of American young adults fly to Israel to visit the city of Jerusalem, a biblical nightmare falls upon the city.

A Jewish woman is recruited to help track down a German commander who was her former husband.

In Alexandria, in 1938, Darley, a young British schoolmaster and poet, makes friends through Pursewarden, the British consular officer, with Justine, the beautiful and mysterious wife of a Coptic banker. He observes the affairs of her heart and incidentally discovers that she is involved in a plot against the British, meant to arm the Jewish underground in Palestine. The plot finally fails, Justine is sent to jail and Darley decides to return to England.

In May 1948, shortly before the creation of the State of Israel, hundreds of immigrants from across Europe arrive in Palestine--only to risk arrest by British troops.

An American Army officer is recruited by the yet to exist Israel to help them form an army. He is disturbed by this sudden appeal to his Jewish heritage. Each of Israel's Arab neighbors has vowed to invade the poorly prepared country as soon as partition is granted. He is made commander of the Israeli forces just before the war begins.

Chronicle of a Disappearance unfolds in a series of seemingly unconnected cinematic tableaux, each of them focused on incidents or characters which seldom reappear later in the film. Among the many unrelated scenes, there is a Palestinian actress struggling to find an apartment in West Jerusalem, the owner of the Holy Land souvenir shop preparing merchandise for incoming Japanese tourists, a group of old women gossiping about their relatives, and an Israeli police van which screeches to a halt so several heavily armed soldiers can get off the car and urinate.

Ari Ben Canaan, a passionate member of the Jewish paramilitary group Haganah, attempts to transport 600 Jewish refugees on a dangerous voyage from Cyprus to Palestine on a ship named the Exodus. He faces obstruction from British forces, who will not grant the ship passage to its destination.

While Old England is being ransacked by roving Danes in the 9th century, Alfred is planning to join the priesthood. But observing the rape of his land, he puts away his religious vows to take up arms against the invaders, leading the English Christians to fight for their country. Alfred soundly defeats the Danes and becomes a hero. But now, although Alfred still longs for the priesthood, he is torn between his passion for God and his lust for blood.

The flat on the third floor of a Bauhaus building in Tel Aviv was where my grandparents lived since they immigrated to Palestine in the 1930s. Were it not for the view from the windows, one might have thought that the flat was in Berlin. When my grandmother passed away at the age of 98 we were called to the flat to clear out what was left. Objects, pictures, letters and documents awaited us, revealing traces of a troubled and unknown past. The film begins with the emptying out of a flat and develops into a riveting adventure, involving unexpected national interests, a friendship that crosses enemy lines, and deeply repressed family emotions. And even reveals some secrets that should have probably remained untold...

Jerusalem, Israel. Professors Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik, father and son, have dedicated their lives to the study of the Jewish scriptures. Eliezer is a stubborn and methodical scholar who has never been recognized for his work; Uriel is a rising star, someone admired and praised by his colleagues. The fragile balance that has kept their personal relationship almost intact is broken in an unexpected way by a simple phone call.

A "slice-of-life" documentary set in Gaza City, following the inner and outer lives of a 13-year-old boy, a self-styled revolutionary, as he struggles to find meaning in his life while his friends are killed around him, one by one.

Documentary about the U.S. Air Force's P-47 Thunderbolt bomber's role in the Italian Campaign.

In 1941, the inhabitants of a small Jewish village in Central Europe organize a fake deportation train so that they can escape the Nazis and flee to Palestine.

Prisoners battle each other -- and the police -- when they escape the Colorado State Penitentiary.

Eighteen-year-old Shira is the youngest daughter of the Mendelman family. She is about to be married off to a promising young man of the same age and background. It is a dream come true, and Shira feels prepared and excited. On Purim, her twenty-eight-year-old sister, Esther, dies while giving birth to her first child, Mordechay. The pain and grief that overwhelm the family postpone Shira's promised match. Everything changes when a match is proposed to Yochay-Esther's late husband-to a widow from Belgium. Yochay feels it's too early, although he realizes that sooner or later he must seriously consider getting married again. When the girls' mother finds out that Yochay may marry the widow and move to Belgium with her only grandchild, she proposes a match between Shira and the widower. Shira will have to choose between her heart's wish and her family duty. She will find out that the void which she must choose exists only within her heart.

Salma Zidane, a widow, lives simply from her grove of lemon trees in the West Bank's occupied territory. The Israeli defence minister and his wife move next door, forcing the Secret Service to order the trees' removal for security. The stoic Salma seeks assistance from the Palestinian Authority, Israeli army, and a young attorney, Ziad Daud, who takes the case. In this allegory, does David stand a chance against Goliath?

In 1939, Kalman, an ambitious young businessman, leaves Europe to join his sister Samantha in Palestine. She lives with Dov, an idealistic architect obsessed with the Bauhaus style. With their friends, they form a group, which discusses the future Israeli State.

In a 1940s New York, two Jewish teenage boys are determined to remain friends despite the deep differences between their two families.

A portrait of various gay Orthodox Jews who struggle to reconcile their faith and their sexual orientation.

The story of the post World War II Jewish refugee situation from liberation to the establishment of the modern state of Israel.

Israeli attorney Hanna Kaufman has her beliefs challenged when she is appointed to the defense of Selim Bakri. Kaufman, who was born in the United States to survivors of the Holocaust, has always accepted Israel's right to exist. But she bears witness to some of the costs of its sovereignty when she meets Bakri, a dispossessed Palestinian man facing serious criminal charges who wants the same thing as his supposed enemies: to reclaim his family home.

An Israeli soldier is taken hostage by a small PLO squad in Lebanon. The soldier planned to go on vacation and to fly to the world final soccer cup, he and his capturers share the love to soccer and toward the (not so happy) end a relationship is made.

'You lack inner peace, I can see it in your eyes...' With this abrupt remark thrown at her by a woman visiting Jerusalem's Wailing Wall, filmmaker Moran Ifergan is reminded of the religion she left in her late teens, when she used to frequent this holy site. While her marriage falls apart, Moran takes us on an around-the-clock journey to the women's side of the Wall; mixing between private and public, sound and image, God and His absence.

A fatherless family immigrates to Israel from Egypt during the British Mandate period. The film traces the hardships the family suffers in the politically unstable country.

First American film about the conflict between Jewish nationalists and the British in the creation of the state of Israel.

In 1948, immediately before a ceasefire takes effect, four volunteers fighting for Israel are ordered to take Hill 24, overlooking the road to Jerusalem.

A group of girls and boys set up a secret society called "Hasamba"; their adventures take place, first during the British Mandate and the struggle for statehood of Israel, and then as they battle their country's enemies: infiltrators, spies, criminals and other offenders

The story of the Russian-born, Wisconsin-raised woman who rose to become Israel's prime minister in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The unbelievable story of Leonid Bernshtein, a young Jewish soldier who rose to become the leader and led the operation to destroy the secret facility of the notorious Nazi V2 ballistic missiles.

After a tempest, fishermen do not find only fish in their nets. That is what happens to Jafaar, a poor fisherman who lives poorly in Gaza. And what he hauls in is really upsetting: imagine that, a pig! An unclean animal judged impure not only by the Faith of Islam but also by the Jewish religion. Determined to get rid of the animal, Jafaar tries desperately to sell it, first to a United Nations official, then to a Jewish colony where Yelena raises pigs not for their meat but for security reasons. Of course, going unnoticed in the company of a "forbidden" animal, among his Palestinian brothers, past Israeli soldiers and under the scrutiny of Islamic fundamentalists is no bed of roses and a series of misadventures await Jafaar.

When aspiring filmmaker David is mandated by a judge to attend a social program at the Jewish Community Center, he is sure of one thing: he doesn't belong there. But when he's assigned to visit the Brooklyn Bridge with the vivacious Sarah, sparks fly and his convictions are tested. Their budding relationship must weather Sarah's romantic past, David's judgmental mother, and their own pre-conceptions of what love is supposed to look like.

Louis Theroux spends time with a small and very committed subculture of ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers. He discovers a group of people who consider it their religious and political obligation to populate some of the most sensitive areas of the West Bank, especially those with a spiritual significance dating back to the Bible. Throughout his journey, Louis gets close to the people most involved with driving the extreme end of the Jewish settler movement - finding them warm, friendly, humorous, and deeply troubling.

In the first century, after the death of Herod the Great, Judea goes through a long period of turbulence due to the actions of the corrupt Roman governors and the internal struggles, both religious and political, between Jewish factions, events that soon lead to the uprising of the population and a cruel war that lasts several years and causes thousands of deaths, a catastrophe described in detail by the Romanized Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus.

Edward Said, critic, tells his story and the story of Palestine.

As part of a season marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel, Liran Atzmor's film documents a battle that took place in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1948 from three points of view - photojournalist John Philips, whose pictures for Life magazine depicted the Jews being evacuated from the Old City; Jack Padwa, the producer of a feature film which tells the story from a Jewish British perspective; and photographer Ali Zaarour, who tells the story from the Palestinian viewpoint. (Storyville)

An account of the reign of Herod the Great, king of Judea under the rule of the Roman Empire, remembered for having ordered, according to the Gospel of Matthew, the murder of all male infants born in Bethlehem at the time of the birth of Jesus, an unproven event that is not mentioned by Titus Flavius Josephus, the main historian of that period.

Set in tsarist Russia around the turn of the century and based on a true story of a Russian Jewish peasant Yakov Bog who was wrongly imprisoned for a most unlikely crime - the “ritual murder” of a Gentile child in Kiev. We witness the unrelenting detail of the peasant handyman's life in prison and see him gain in dignity as the efforts to humiliate him and make him confess fail.

A tale of friendship between two men, one Jewish and the other Arab, as the state of Israel is being created.

A drama inspired by the best-selling autobiography "Why Me" by Jacob Damkani. "A New Spirit" tells the story of two brothers, Jacob and Shmuel, who grew up in a poor, traditional Jewish family. As they mature, Shmuel becomes more orthodox and religious while Jacob is exposed to Christianity and ends up becoming a leader of Messianic Judaism, spreading the word of Jesus. Shmuel and the entire Orthodox community treat Jacob as a radical missionary and accuse him of stealing pure Jewish souls. The conflict between the two brothers escalates to real violence when an attempt is made to kill Jacob, causing the dissolution of the entire family.

In Israel's Central Prison, the security officer is corrupt, supplying drugs and stirring the hatred between Jewish and Arab prisoners to his advantage. Uri, in for 12 years for armed robbery, and Issan, in for 50 years for PLO violence, command the respect of their cells. When the Arabs are framed for the murder of a Jewish prisoner and a young inmate commits suicide rather than lie about what happened, Uri and Issan form an unlikely partnership, leading the security block on a strike. Prison officials try to break it. In the background are Uri's daughter and Issan's wife, women of beauty and passion who embody the distance from inside a cell to the outside.

Based on the award-winning play and popular Israeli short story, this poignant family drama follows Rivka, 19-years-old and strong-willed, who struggles to follow the conservative lifestyle of her ultra-orthodox parents in Jerusalem. Determined to break free from her parents’ rigid worldview, she runs away to a secular farming community in the desert. The decision pushes the two generations to confront the chasm between their stringent views of tradition and modernity.

"My Father My Lord" is an intimate and deeply disturbing story of the conflict between a father's love and his deep devotion to religion. A respected Orthodox Rabbi dotes on his only son but his religious strictures leave an emotional gap between the impish child and the stern father. When the father's all-consuming obsession with observing religious ritual inadvertently leads to tragedy, his previously subservient wife rages against both her husband and God. A dramatic retelling of the story of Abraham.

On April 9, 1948, a Jewish militia entered the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin and killed over 100 villagers. Soon after, a mental hospital was built on the ruins. The first patients to be committed were Holocaust survivors. A legend says that to this day, the survivors have been communicating with the ghosts of the village. Forgiveness tells the story of David Adler, a 20-year old American-Israeli who decides to move back to Israel, only to find himself committed to a mental institution that sits on the ruins of a Palestinian village called Deir Yassin. Flashbacks and flashforwards reveal the events that led up to his hospitalization.

The love story of Margalit (Pnina Gary), who lives in Nahalal, and Eli Ben-Zvi, son of Rachel Yanait and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Israeli's second president. The year is 1947, a tumultuous period as tensions rise between the Israeli settlement and the Arab tribes and neighboring countries. A chance encounter sparks love at first sight between Margalit, of Nahalal – a cooperative workers' settlement – and Eli Ben-Zvi, the Muhtar of the Beit Keshet kibbutz. The affair is off to a rocky start, as Eli is committed to the defense efforts that preceded the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 and the birth of the State of Israel. The two go on to set a wedding date, but the fight for a nation leaves no room for young lovers.

Documentary tracing the history of the Jewish people from the destruction of the temple in AD 70 to the modern-day nation of Israel. Through scriptural and historical evidence, DNA, mathematics, and testimony from rabbis and pastors, it attempts to answer the question, "Who are God's chosen people?".