Best movies like The Tower

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.

After years abroad in Italy, Shadi returns to his native Nazareth. But this is no spectacular homecoming. He's back somewhat begrudgingly to honour his "wajib" (or duty) to hand out invitations to his sister's wedding with his father. The simmering tension between the two — who are often stuck in a car, more often than not in traffic — builds, exposing the sometimes-comic chasms that exist between men who live in different worlds but share an unshakable bond.

An Israeli film director interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to reconstruct his own memories of his term of service in that conflict.

A Palestinian seeks Israeli permission to waive curfew to give his son a fine wedding. The military governor's condition is that he and his officers attend. The groom berates his father for agreeing. Women ritually prepare the bride; men prepare the groom. Guests gather. The Arab youths plot violence. One Israeli officer swoons in the heat and Arab women take her into the cool house. A thoroughbred gets loose and runs to a mined field; soldiers and Arabs must cooperate to rescue it. As darkness falls, tensions between army and villagers rise, and the groom's wedding-night anger and impotence threaten family dignity and honor. Can cool heads prevail?

Divided into three “kingdoms” — Enfer (Hell), Purgatoire (Purgatory) and Paradis (Paradise) — Notre Musique is an indictment of modern times.

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

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

In a bold coup a Palestinian terrorist group captures the yacht Rosebud and kidnaps the millionaires five daughters on it. At first they demand film clips to be shown on major European TV stations. Undercover agent Martin is hired to hunt the terrorists down.

Members of a devout Christian congregation try to start a new life in Palestine.

Eager to provide a better future for her son, Fadi, divorcée Muna Farah leaves her Palestinian homeland and takes up residence in rural Illinois -- just in time to encounter the domestic repercussions of America's disastrous war in Iraq. Now, the duo must reinvent their lives with some help from Muna's sister, Raghda, and brother-in-law, Nabeel.

In 1980s Beirut, Mason Skiles is a former U.S. diplomat who is called back into service to save a colleague from the group that is possibly responsible for his own family's death. Meanwhile, a CIA field agent who is working under cover at the American embassy is tasked with keeping Mason alive and ensuring that the mission is a success.

When Jimmy leaves his reservation for the lures of city life, he finds himself confronted with a future he could never have imagined.

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.

GAZA brings us into a unique place beyond the reach of television news reports to reveal a world rich with eloquent and resilient characters, offering us a cinematic and enriching portrait of a people attempting to lead meaningful lives against the rubble of perennial conflict. Throughout its entire history the Gaza Strip has been witness to conflict and upheaval. From ancient times this tiny coastal territory, located at a crossroads between continents, has been a pawn whose fate rested in the hands of powerful neighbours.

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 set-up for an experiment in an empty room. Former inmates reconstruct an Israeli secret service interrogation centre. These Palestinian men use role play to come to terms with their memories and the humiliation they have experienced.

Palestine, 1948. After the withdrawal of the British occupiers, tensions rise between Arabs and Jews. Meanwhile, Farha, the smart daughter of the mayor of a small village, unaware of the coming tragedy, dreams of going to study in the big city.

Dr. Reineger, a famous neuro-psychologist, has become convinced that a twin girl named Anna has a rare form of Autism called Asperger's Syndrome, rendering her unable to cope with reality. As for her blind sister, Sarah, the doctor cannot say for sure why her imaginary visions map so close to Anna's. At home, unable to face reality, their father leaves the family. To escape the pain, the girls sink deeper and deeper into their imagination. When a major earthquake takes their mother's life, Reineger gets more involved with helping the now-orphaned twins, while struggling with his realization that the girls seem to be capable of prophetic visions. The girls escape the doctor's institution and a subsequent search finds no trace of them. Have they transcended the physical realm? A mixture of live action, stop motion animation and other techniques makes this film a fantastic journey into the realm of imagination.

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

The insatiably curious and headstrong inventor Leonardo da Vinci leaves Italy to join the French court, where he can experiment freely, inventing flying contraptions, incredible machines, and study the human body. There, joined in his adventure by the audacious princess Marguerite, Leonardo will uncover the answer to the ultimate question – "What is the meaning of it all?"

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.

Filmmaker Elia Suleiman travels to different cities and finds unexpected parallels to his homeland of Palestine.

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.

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.

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.

A documentary on Jacques Vergès, the controversial lawyer and former Free French Forces guerrilla, exploring how Vergès assisted, from the 1960s onwards, anti-imperialist terrorist cells operating in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Participants interviewed include Algerian nationalists Yacef Saadi, Zohra Drif, Djamila Bouhired and Abderrahmane Benhamida, Khmer Rouge members Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, once far-left activists Hans-Joachim Klein and Magdalena Kopp, terrorist Carlos the Jackal, lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, neo-Nazi Ahmed Huber, Palestinian politician Bassam Abu Sharif, Lebanese politician Karim Pakradouni, political cartoonist Siné, former spy Claude Moniquet, novelist and ghostwriter Lionel Duroy, and investigative journalist Oliver Schröm.

A robot messenger is sent to earth to appeal to humans to live in peace. Originally designed to go to MIT, by mistake she ends up in Amman, Jordan during the Black September riots of 1970. Sullivan, a British journalist, comes to her aid when she is found wandering without papers following a bombing and grants her refuge in his hotel room. But there she tells him she is a robot, sent as a peace envoy from another planet. He is not sure whether to believe her story or not, but finds her unusual view of the world appealing. They examine the human condition in a series of incredibly insightful and entertaining conversations.

A Palestinian boy becomes entranced with a beautiful Gypsy girl and a fairy tale world she weaves amidst conflict in Gaza. The children explore nature, mysticism and what their future holds, while learning to live with the surrounding brutality c. 1990. Yusef's family scrapes by in a seaside camp while his father's in prison and his heavily-armed brother's on the run, parrying with Israeli troops. Salah, Yusef's schoolmate from a well-off Arab family strives faithfully to assist them, while Yusef helps an elderly, blind neighbor escape from his lonely abandonment into the North American dreamworld he's waited so long for.

Before leaving to settle abroad, Ahmad accepts one last job. He must audition actors for the new National Palestinian Theatre. On the road with interviewer Bissan and her cameraman Loumir, Ahmad goes in search of talent in the numerous refugee camps of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Hopefully for the last time, Ahmad experiences the insurmountable difficulties of life in Palestine: harassing searches at check points and borders, barricades, constant tension. He realizes the destiny of all waiting refugees is much the same as his own. He ends up guiding the auditioning actors into dramatizing what best embodies their destiny. But with the chance to catch his plane at risk, Ahmad could see the opportunity for his long-awaited exile slip away.

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

Chronopolis tells the story of a gargantuan city lurking in the sky colonized by powerful immortals who have become jaded with eternal life. Most of their time is spent monotonously constructing bizarre and unusual objects while waiting for the ultimate gift to arrive in their hands.

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.

A documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has lasted for more than 50 years. Contains some interviews with the children in this conflict.

The film returns to the origins of the creation of the State of Israel (from 1896 to 1948) and highlights the responsibility of the Western World.

West Jerusalem is dotted with comfortable stone villas built by affluent Palestinian families in the early 20th century, who were forced to abandon their homes 1948. The film delves into this legacy with a supernatural tale about a British-Jewish woman who moves to Jerusalem seeking to move on from a painful past. When she moves into old Palestinian house in West Jerusalem, she encounters the ghost of a Palestinian girl who was separated from her family in 1948.

Born in Brooklyn to Palestinian refugee parents, Soraya (Suheir Hammad) decides to journey to the country of her ancestry when she discovers that her grandfather's savings have been frozen in a Jaffa bank account since his 1948 exile. However, she soon finds that her simple plan is a complicated undertaking — one that takes her further from her comfort zone than she'd imagined.

Sami was at his parents’ house back in the village, when peace began to break out. He had gone there with his wife and kid for his brother's wedding . Back in the village people told him, “There’s no place like home,” and asked when he’d be coming back, but deep down Sami knew that he had forgotten. You can’t be away for that long without forgetting something.

An examination of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 through to the present day. A semi-biographic film, in four chapters, about a family spanning from 1948 until recent times. Combined with intimate memories of each member, the film attempts to portray the daily life of those Palestinians who remained in their land and were labelled "Israeli-Arabs," living as a minority in their own homeland.

A free spirited woman dancer, Kamar, finds herself the lonely wife of a prisoner, Zaid, and away from everything she loves until she returns to the dance, defying societys taboos. At the dance Kamar is confronted with Kais, a Palestinian returnee. Sparks fly between Kamar and Kais, creating more than a passionate, emotional dance for the both of them. Matters become even more complicated when Zaid's sentence is extended. Kamar's life is thrown into turmoil as she becomes increasingly attached to Kais, and caught in the midst of her desire to dance and breaking the family and society taboos of the prisoner's wife's role while life under occupation rages on.

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 ...

August in Paris' suburbs, seven friends are gathered to spend a week in the city where they grew up. The city is empty and the days pass by under a deep blue sky. Each of them has a reason to be there: some still live there, some come back to see their family, some are searching their childhood, some want to escape boredom or eventually searching for love. They are all bearing the fact that these moments they are sharing are maybe the last ones.

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.

Three aliens from an unknown planet, who bear a strong resemblance to the Biblical Magi, visit earth to know the true meaning of Christmas. Peter, a young boy, and Lucy, his goose, are the first to encounter them. Unable to find the true meaning of Christmas in town, Peter takes them to his family's house in the woods. While Peter's grandmother tells the aliens about her memories of Christmas, Marvin, one of the town's bullies, steals Lucy. In the chase to rescue Lucy, Marvin falls through the ice in a lake. Peter attempts to rescue him but falls into the lake as well. The townsfolk, who were out searching for the aliens, attempt to save the boys but their human chain isn't long enough to reach them. The three aliens, who had sworn not to interfere with events on earth, decide to help in order to learn the meaning of Christmas.

A bird raised by mice begins to question where she belongs and sets off on a daring journey of self-discovery.

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.