Middle Eastern Cinema
Palestinian walls, Iranian pressure, Lebanese resilience. The most politically urgent cinema in the world.
200 Meters · Palestine 2020 · Ameen Nayfeh · Audience Award · Venice Days ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Mustafa and his wife live in two Palestinian villages only 200 meters apart, split by Israel’s separation wall. When his son is hospitalised and he’s denied access through the checkpoint on a technicality, the 200-meter distance becomes a 200-kilometer odyssey. A road movie built from an absurd, cruel reality. Ali Suliman anchors the film with a terrific central performance.
The Reports on Sarah and Saleem · Palestine 2018 · Muayad Alayan ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A married Israeli café owner and a married Palestinian delivery man embark on an illicit affair. When a risky late-night tryst goes wrong, their frantic attempts to contain the damage pull in the Israeli military and the security services. What starts as a domestic drama becomes a surveillance thriller — in Jerusalem, nothing personal stays private for long.
Omar · Palestine 2013 · Hany Abu-Assad · Special Jury Prize · Cannes · Oscar Nominated · Best Foreign Film ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A Palestinian baker who routinely climbs the West Bank separation wall to visit his secret love is arrested after the killing of an Israeli soldier and tricked into working as an informant. Abu-Assad’s taut thriller about loyalty, betrayal, and what occupation does to trust between people who should be on the same side.
Paradise Now · Palestine 2005 · Hany Abu-Assad · Golden Globe · Best Foreign Film · Oscar Nominated ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Two childhood friends are recruited for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. Abu-Assad refuses to make them monsters — he makes them human, which is the more unsettling choice. A film that asks what pushes ordinary people toward the unthinkable, without ever excusing the answer. First Palestinian film nominated for an Oscar.
Karaoke · Israel 2022 · Moshe Rosenthal · Best Film · Jerusalem Film Festival ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A long-married couple in an upscale Tel Aviv high-rise find their quiet routine upended when a charismatic bachelor moves in next door. What looks like a light comedy about aging turns into something sharper — about desire, visibility, and what happens when two people who stopped seeing each other suddenly want to be seen by someone else. The karaoke sequences are genuinely electric.
Asia · Israel 2020 · Ruthy Pribar · 9 Israeli Academy Awards ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A Russian immigrant nurse in Jerusalem, brash and restless, who has always kept emotional distance from her teenage daughter. When the daughter’s health suddenly deteriorates, Asia must become the mother she never quite managed to be. Pribar’s debut is quiet, precise, and builds to a final act of almost unbearable tenderness.
Working Woman · Israel — Isha Ovedet 2018 · Michal Aviad · TIFF · Official Selection ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A mother of three lands a job at a real estate firm and finds herself trapped in an escalating pattern of workplace harassment by her boss. Precise and uncomfortably real. Liron Ben-Shlush delivers one of Israeli cinema’s great recent performances.
The Cakemaker · Israel 2017 · Ofir Raul Graizer · 7 Israeli Academy Awards ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A German baker in Berlin falls for a married Israeli man who travels for work. When the man dies in an accident, the baker travels to Jerusalem and quietly enters the life of his widow — without telling her who he is. A film about grief, love across every kind of border, and the strange tenderness that sometimes grows between strangers.
The Kindergarten Teacher · Israel — Haganenet 2014 · Nadav Lapid · Best Director · Tribeca ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A kindergarten teacher becomes transfixed by a five-year-old boy’s extraordinary gift for poetry — and begins passing off his poems as her own. Nadav Lapid’s disquieting film about obsession, cultural anxiety, and what happens when a person mistakes possession for nurturing.
Jaffa · Israel 2009 · Keren Yedaya ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Jaffa, a young woman plans to run away with her secret lover — until a tragedy permanently changes the course of both their lives. Less about the conflict than about the suffocating weight of family, gender, and what young people sacrifice to keep the peace at home.
Lemon Tree · Israel — Etz Limon 2008 · Eran Riklis · Audience Award · Berlin ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A Palestinian widow must defend her lemon grove when the new Israeli Defence Minister moves next door and security forces threaten to destroy it. Based on a true story — two women on opposite sides of a wall, both trapped by the men around them. Riklis keeps the politics small and human.
Walk on Water · Israel 2004 · Eytan Fox · Berlin Panorama · Audience Award ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A Mossad hitman, reeling from his wife’s suicide, is assigned to track an aging Nazi war criminal by posing as a tour guide for the man’s grandchildren — one of them a gay German man who slowly dismantles every wall Eyal has built around himself. Uses the thriller format to ask deeper questions about Israeli identity, masculinity, and inherited trauma.
Capernaum · Lebanon 2018 · Nadine Labaki · Jury Prize · Cannes · Oscar Nominated · Best Foreign Film ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A 12-year-old boy in Beirut sues his parents for bringing him into the world. Labaki shoots entirely on location with non-professional actors, plunging into poverty, statelessness, and the lives of those the system has never seen. The first film by a Lebanese woman nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
The Attack · Lebanon — L’Attentat 2012 · Ziad Doueiri · Banned by Arab League ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A well-integrated Arab-Israeli surgeon in Tel Aviv — successful, apolitical, happy. Then a suicide bombing kills nineteen people, and the evidence points to his wife. He travels to the West Bank to find those who recruited her, and discovers that he belongs nowhere. Lebanese director Ziad Doueiri’s most provocative film — banned by the Arab League for filming in Israel. A man who loses his country twice.
Where Do We Go Now? · Lebanon 2011 · Nadine Labaki · People’s Choice Award · Toronto ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In a remote Lebanese village, Christian and Muslim women conspire together to distract their husbands and sons from the sectarian violence threatening to tear their community apart. Labaki blends comedy, music, and real grief in a way only Lebanese cinema seems capable of.
Caramel · Lebanon — Sukkar Banat 2007 · Nadine Labaki · Cannes · Directors’ Fortnight ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Five Lebanese women meet regularly at a beauty salon in Beirut — a warm, sensual microcosm where they share forbidden loves, repressed desires, the fear of aging, and the weight of duty. Labaki’s debut pointedly refuses to show Beirut as war-ravaged — it insists on the city’s everyday humanity instead. The biggest success of Lebanese cinema abroad.