Best movies like Five Broken Cameras

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

The drama, the story of three childhood friends and a young woman who are torn apart in their fight for freedom, is billed as the first fully-financed film to come out of the Palestinian cinema industry.

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

Ozzy, a friendly, peaceful beagle has his idyllic life turned upside down when the Martins leave on a long and distant trip. There's only one problem: no dogs allowed! Unable to bring their beloved Ozzy along for the ride, they settle on the next best thing, a top-of-the-line canine spa called Blue Creek.

Sam Moran is a Honolulu charter-boat captain who leads fishing expeditions in the tropical paradise. When his daughter is found murdered at the party of a wealthy young playboy, he seeks the truth about the murder. Convinced the playboy is guilty, he enlists the help of his friend Kittibelle, who runs an alcohol abuse treatment center. Sam runs into a wall of silence obviously built by hush money and islanders fearful of reprisals from the rich and powerful family. The determined dad fights to uncover the information that will land the murderer in jail as he avenges the death of his daughter.

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.

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...

A troubled family must face facts when tragedy strikes their son's desolate military post.

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.

A look at the lives of two teenage girls - inseparable friends Ginger and Rosa -- growing up in 1960s London as the Cuban Missile Crisis looms, and the pivotal event the comes to redefine their relationship.

A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice– whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.

A Canadian doctor finds her sympathies sorely tested while working in the conflict ravaged Palestinian territories.

David Osit’s thought-provoking documentary is a real-life political saga following Musa Hadid, the Christian mayor of Ramallah, during his second term in office.

Two childhood friends are recruited for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.

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?

Ajami is an area of Tel Aviv in Israel where Arabs, Palestinians, Jews and Christians live together in a tense atmosphere. Omar, an Israeli Arab, struggles to save his family from a gang of extortionists. He also courts a beautiful Christian girl: Hadir. Malek, an illegal Palestinian worker, tries to collect enough money to pay for his mother's operation. Dando, an Israeli cop, does his utmost to find his missing brother who may have been killed by Palestinians.

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.

This drama portrays a day in the life of a Palestinian family during a curfew announced by the Israeli army in a Palestinian refugee camp on the Gaza Strip in 1993. From that point on, they must live behind closed shutters, barred from their daily lives and needs.

Pierre is 25 when he returns from Wyoming to his fiancée and take over the family farm. Twenty years later, the farm expanded and so did the family.

Alex is an 11-year old boy who, during WWII, hides in the Jewish ghetto from Nazis after all his relatives have been sent to the concentration camp. The movie portrays the ghetto through his eyes.

Palestinian director Bassam Jarbawi's debut feature film tackles the physical and emotional toll of one man's return home after 15 years in an Israeli jail.

Mustafa and his wife Salwa come from two Palestinian villages that are only 200 meters apart, but separated by the wall. Their unusual living situation is starting to affect their otherwise happy marriage, but the couple does what they can to make it work. Every night, Mustafa flashes a light from his balcony to wish his children on the other side a goodnight, and they signal him back. One day Mustafa gets a call that every parent dreads: his son has been in an accident. He rushes to the checkpoint where he must agonisingly wait in line only to find out there is a problem with his fingerprints and is denied entry. Desperate, Mustafa resorts to hiring a smuggler to bring him across. His once 200-meter journey becomes a 200-kilometer odyssey joined by other travellers determined to cross.

Gentle and broken, a homeless man fights others on video for money but soon finds comfort in an unlikely friend and the lost diary of a young girl.

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.

Documentarian Ra'anan Alexandrowicz accompanies a Palestinian tour group on a three-day sight-seeing trip to Israel.

After Tom Hurndall is shot in the head in Gaza, his parents Anthony and Jocelyn arrive in Israel wanting to know how it could have happened. They expect sympathy and cooperation from the Israeli authorities, but are instead met with an official explanation that fails to tally with any eye-witness accounts, and a wall of silence. When an Israeli army report attempts to whitewash the incident, the Hurndalls decide the only way to establish the truth is to launch their own investigation into the shooting, a process which brings them face to face with both the Open-Fire regulations of the Israeli army in Gaza, and the soldier who pulled the trigger.

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.

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.

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)

Yousry Nasrallah's powerful adaptation of Lebanese writer Elias Khoury's epic novel of fifty years of Palestinian dispossession, exile, and resistance. The film follows the flight of Younes, his wife Nahila, and those around them, from their village in northern Palestine to a refugee camp in Lebanon. Some vow to continue the struggle, most simply struggle to survive. Unsparingly detailing the impact of the nakba (disaster) on Palestinian life and society and the refugees' often-contentious relationship with their reluctant Lebanese hosts, Gate of the Sun spans generations, mixing personal stories with historical events.

Tareq is released from an Israeli prison and returns to his hometown in Palestine, a place transformed by drastic changes and filled with secrets, to find his daughter. As secrets are uncovered, light is shed on the stifling nature of contemporary Palestinian society, while revealing Tareq’s hidden past. Inspired by true events.

Yacine is the veterinarian of the only zoo remaining in the Palestinian West Bank. He lives alone with his 10-year old son, Ziad. The kid has a special bond with the two giraffes in the zoo. He seems to be the only one to communicate with them. After an air raid in the region the male giraffe dies. His mate, Rita, won’t survive unless the veterinarian finds her a new companion. The only zoo that might provide this animal is located in Tel Aviv ...

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 story is set in the midst of war-torn Gaza during the Second Intifada in 2003, where two 12-year-old boys, one Palestinian and the other Israeli, along with an ex-surfing champion, form an unlikely friendship over their mutual love for the water. The lessons they learn from one another go beyond the waves, helping influence their decision-making and show their community that peace can exist.