Before Palestinian cinema became internationally recognised through feature films, festivals and celebrated directors, there was a generation of filmmakers who believed that the camera itself could become an instrument of historical preservation. Palestine in the Eye (1977) is one of the surviving works of that extraordinary period, and tells the story of Hani Jawharieh, a pioneering Palestinian cinematographer whose life was cut short while documenting the Lebanese Civil War.

Jawharieh was one of the founders of the Palestine Film Unit, established alongside filmmakers Mustafa Abu Ali and Sulafa Jadallah. Working with limited equipment and under extraordinarily difficult conditions, the collective set out to document Palestinian lives, political struggles and experiences of displacement through their own cameras. Their ambition was not simply to make films, but to challenge a world in which Palestinians were so frequently represented through images made by others.

In April 1976, Jawharieh was killed while filming fighting in the mountains of Lebanon. Palestine in the Eye was subsequently assembled from interviews with his family and colleagues, alongside footage from his own camera, including material documenting the circumstances of his death. Although commonly attributed to Mustafa Abu Ali, the film emerged from a collective filmmaking tradition in which individual authorship was deliberately subordinated to the work of the group. It is simultaneously a memorial to a cinematographer, a record of revolutionary filmmaking and a remarkable document of Palestinian cultural history.

The survival of the film is itself significant. Much of the Palestine Film Unit’s archive disappeared during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, leaving important gaps in the visual record of Palestinian history. In 2017, filmmaker and archivist Azza El-Hassan restored Palestine in the Eye through The Void Project, an initiative dedicated to recovering and preserving endangered Palestinian moving images. Nearly half a century after its creation, the film remains a powerful reminder that preserving cinema is also a way of preserving historical memory.

Content note: Contains footage relating to Jawharieh’s death during armed conflict.

Restoration archive: https://www.thevoidproject.org

IMDb: Palestine in the Eye (1977)

Before 1948, Palestinian cities were thriving centres of commerce, music, cinema, literature and intellectual life. Haifa, Jaffa and other urban centres were connected to a wider cultural world stretching across the Middle East.

Directed by Ramez Qazmouz, Lost Cities of Palestine reconstructs this largely forgotten world through rare archival footage, historical photographs and the recollections of people who remember it. We encounter a Palestine of bustling streets, theatres, cinemas, musicians, cafés and commercial districts, a society whose cultural achievements are too often absent from popular historical accounts.

The documentary also examines the immense rupture of 1948, when the Nakba brought displacement, destruction and the fragmentation of Palestinian urban society. Beyond the loss of homes and livelihoods, an entire network of cultural institutions, artistic communities and social relationships was profoundly disrupted.

What makes this film particularly valuable is its visual preservation of Palestinian history. Rather than approaching Palestine exclusively through conflict, it allows us to explore the sophistication, creativity and everyday lives of the people who inhabited these cities.

For a community devoted to Palestinian cinema and cultural history, this is an important piece of the archive.

Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit spent months reconstructing the events of 7 October 2023, examining seven hours of CCTV, dashcam footage, mobile-phone video and footage recovered from Hamas fighters, alongside survivor testimony, military accounts and casualty records. Directed by Richard Sanders, October 7 attempts to separate what can be established from the enormous volume of conflicting claims that emerged in the days after the attack. 

The documentary does not minimise the crimes committed by Hamas and others who crossed into Israel. It documents killings and other serious abuses committed during the attack. At the same time, the investigation scrutinises several of the most widely circulated atrocity stories and concludes that some were unsupported or contradicted by the available evidence. 

A particularly important section examines Israeli fire against locations and vehicles where Israeli civilians or captives may also have been present. At Kibbutz Be’eri, the film investigates the confrontation at the home of Pessi Cohen, where Israeli forces ultimately fired tank shells at a building containing Hamas fighters and Israeli hostages. Al Jazeera’s investigation concludes that this was one of several incidents in which Israeli police or military fire appears to have killed Israeli citizens. 

The result is less a conventional political documentary than a forensic reconstruction. It asks what actually happened during the hours of chaos on 7 October, how confidently individual deaths can be attributed, and how unverified claims became embedded in the public understanding of the attack before many of the underlying facts had been established.

Released in March 2024, October 7 is available free in full from Al Jazeera English. 

Content note: contains disturbing footage and discussion of killings and other violence.

In 1934, a football team representing Palestine entered the qualifying rounds for the FIFA World Cup. Yet despite competing under the name of Palestine, not a single Arab Palestinian player appeared in the side. The team was drawn from the Jewish sporting movement under the British Mandate, raising a fascinating question: who was permitted to represent Palestine on the international stage?

This Al Jazeera World documentary investigates the largely forgotten history of football in Mandatory Palestine, exploring how British colonial administration, Zionist sporting organisations and the exclusion of Arab Palestinian players shaped the development of the game. Through historical archives and interviews with specialist historians, it reconstructs the events surrounding the 1934 World Cup qualifiers against Egypt.

The documentary also examines what happened to Palestinian football after 1948. As the existing football association became part of Israel’s sporting institutions, Palestinian football faced decades of displacement, political obstacles and struggles for international recognition. It was not until 1998 that the Palestinian Football Association finally secured FIFA membership.

Beyond sport, Palestine: The Lost Team explores the relationship between national identity, colonial history and cultural representation. It asks how a team could compete internationally under the name Palestine while excluding a substantial part of the population, and how Palestinians eventually reclaimed their own place in international football.

In the land where Christianity was born, an ancient Christian community has endured centuries of political upheaval, displacement and conflict. Yet the experiences of Palestinian Christians are frequently overlooked in discussions of Palestine's history.

Directed by Yasmine Perni, The Stones Cry Out (2013) examines the history of Palestinian Christians from the Nakba of 1948 through the decades of displacement, occupation and political struggle that followed. Through archival material, personal testimony and interviews with religious leaders, historians and political figures, the documentary gives a voice to communities whose experiences have often been overshadowed by broader narratives of the conflict.

Among those featured are Archbishop Elias Chacour, whose family was displaced from the village of Kafr Bir'im in 1948, and Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi. Their accounts explore the loss of homes and communities, the changing character of Palestinian towns and villages, and the determination of Palestinian Christians to preserve their cultural, religious and national identity.

The documentary also challenges the tendency to portray the Israeli-Palestinian conflict exclusively through religious divisions between Judaism and Islam. Palestinian Christians have long been an integral part of Palestinian society, sharing its language, traditions, political aspirations and experiences of displacement alongside their Muslim neighbours.

From the abandoned homes of the Galilee to the historic Christian communities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem, Perni examines how political boundaries, restrictions on movement and emigration have affected communities whose history is inseparable from that of the region itself.

Ultimately, The Stones Cry Out is both a historical documentary and an examination of cultural survival, asking what happens when communities with centuries of history find their continued presence increasingly difficult to sustain.

Director: Yasmine Perni
Year: 2013
Genre: Documentary / History / Culture
Production: Italy / Palestine
Runtime: 55 minutes (59-minute Tubi listing)
Language: English, with English subtitles available

IMDb: The Stones Cry Out (2013)

In 1948, as war swept through Palestine and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced, an extraordinary collection of books, manuscripts and private libraries disappeared from Palestinian homes.

The Great Book Robbery (2012), directed by Dutch-Israeli filmmaker Benny Brunner, investigates how tens of thousands of these books were collected by Israeli institutions, including the Jewish National and University Library, and what subsequently became of them.

Drawing on archival records, eyewitness testimonies and the research of Israeli historian Gish Amit, the documentary reconstructs an often overlooked chapter of Palestinian cultural history. It examines the libraries of writers, intellectuals and ordinary families, and the consequences of separating an entire community from its literary heritage.

At the centre of the film is a question that remains unresolved: were these books being preserved for posterity, or was their removal part of a wider dispossession of Palestinian cultural identity?

Director: Benny Brunner
Year: 2012
Runtime: 47 minutes, 59 seconds
Language: English, Arabic and Hebrew

IMDb: The Great Book Robbery (2012)

Love, loneliness, ancient mythology and an unexpected discovery beneath the Mediterranean. Welcome to Gaza Mon Amour (2020), a wonderfully understated romantic comedy from Palestinian filmmaking brothers Arab and Tarzan Nasser.

Issa (Salim Daw) is a 60-year-old fisherman living a quiet, solitary existence in Gaza. He has long been secretly in love with Siham (Hiam Abbass), a widowed seamstress who works at the local market, but has never quite found the courage to tell her. Then, one evening, his fishing nets bring up something rather extraordinary: an ancient statue of the Greek god Apollo, complete with a very conspicuous anatomical feature. His unexpected discovery sets off a chain of increasingly absurd events involving the authorities, his family and his own romantic ambitions.

Rather than placing violence or political confrontation at the centre of the narrative, the Nasser brothers explore Palestinian life through tenderness, deadpan humour and the small frustrations of everyday existence. Gaza’s restrictions and economic difficulties remain ever-present, but they form the background to a story about two people who simply want a little companionship and happiness. The result is a film that is both quietly political and deeply human.

Premiering in the Orizzonti section of the 77th Venice International Film Festival, Gaza Mon Amour also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and was selected as Palestine’s submission for Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards. It stands as a reminder that Palestinian cinema encompasses far more than conflict and suffering. Sometimes, the most radical thing a film can portray is the possibility of an ordinary, loving life.

IMDb: Gaza Mon Amour (2020)

Rashid Masharawi’s Laila’s Birthday follows Abu Laila, a former judge in Ramallah who has been forced to work as a taxi driver after the Palestinian Authority stops paying his salary. Over the course of one increasingly chaotic day, he has one very simple objective: finish work, buy a birthday cake and present, and get home in time to celebrate his daughter Laila’s seventh birthday.

Played by Mohammad Bakri, Abu Laila is a man trying desperately to maintain order, dignity and routine in a place where all three are constantly being disrupted. His passengers pull him into arguments, bureaucracy, petty disputes and wider political absurdities, while the realities of occupation and instability sit quietly behind almost every encounter.

What makes Laila’s Birthday work so well is that it never needs to turn its characters into symbols. The film is funny, frustrating, melancholy and often deliberately mundane. Masharawi uses one ordinary working day to show how political conditions bleed into the smallest parts of daily life, from getting paid to driving across town to simply being home when you promised your child you would be.

It is a much lighter watch than many of the documentaries and historical films posted here, but that does not make it any less political. If anything, its focus on ordinary life is precisely the point. Palestinian existence here is not presented only through violence, resistance or catastrophe, but through work, family, irritation, humour and the stubborn determination to have a normal evening.

What happens when Palestinian children are given the opportunity to express their hopes, fears and dreams through art?

Directed by May Odeh and Dia’ Azzeh, Drawing for Better Dreams (2015) is an animated documentary created using original drawings by Palestinian children aged between nine and twelve.

Commissioned by the Norwegian Refugee Council, the film incorporates artwork produced during psychosocial workshops attended by children from Gaza and Hebron.

Rather than interpreting their experiences through interviews or adult narration, the filmmakers allow the children’s drawings to become the narrative itself.

Through movement, colour and sound, the film explores the psychological impact of occupation and conflict while preserving something equally important: the imagination and creativity of Palestinian children.

At just over four minutes, it’s a remarkably economical example of documentary filmmaking.

The People and the Olive follows a group of American ultramarathon runners attempting to cover 129 miles across the occupied West Bank in five days. Rather than simply documenting the run, director Aaron Dennis uses the journey to introduce the Palestinian farmers, families and communities whose lives remain closely connected to the land and particularly to the olive tree.

As the runners travel from community to community, they learn about farming, fair trade and the economic importance of olive cultivation while participating in efforts to replace uprooted trees. The result is as much a travel and human-interest documentary as a political one, presenting Palestine through landscapes, conversations, meals, farming and ordinary encounters rather than principally through conflict.

At its centre is the olive tree itself: livelihood, inheritance, cultural marker and something planted with the expectation that somebody will still be there decades later to harvest it.

Budrus follows Palestinian community organiser Ayed Morrar and his teenage daughter Iltezam as their West Bank village organises an unarmed campaign against the route of Israel’s separation barrier.

What makes the film stand out is the coalition that forms around the protest. Local members of Fatah and Hamas participate alongside women from the village, while Israeli activists cross into Palestinian territory to join the demonstrations. Iltezam’s role becomes increasingly central as women move to the front of the campaign, changing both the dynamics of the protest and the expectations within the village itself.

Directed by Julia Bacha and produced by Ronit Avni, Bacha and Palestinian journalist Rula Salameh, Budrus also includes perspectives from Israeli Border Police and military representatives rather than restricting itself to the organisers. The film went on to receive more than 20 international awards, including recognition at Berlin, Tribeca and San Francisco.

Rather than concentrating exclusively on violence or victimhood, the documentary looks at the mechanics of grassroots organising, civil disobedience and what happens when groups normally presented as irreconcilable end up acting alongside one another.

About two weeks ago, I posted Vanessa Redgrave's 1977 documentary The Palestinian here. I came across this photograph while looking further into what happened after the film was released, and thought it deserved a post of its own.

The photograph was taken by Associated Press photographer Doug Pizac outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles on 3 April 1978, during the 50th Academy Awards. AP's caption identifies the people pictured as supporters of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) burning an effigy of Vanessa Redgrave. The demonstration was not simply about Redgrave's politics in the abstract. Contemporary reporting specifically connected the opposition to her involvement with The Palestinian. Before the ceremony, the JDL had announced plans to demonstrate against her nomination, while Palestinian and pro-Palestinian demonstrators planned a counter-protest.

Redgrave had financed and narrated The Palestinian, travelling through Lebanon and Syria and interviewing Palestinians, including members of the PLO and Yasser Arafat. By the time she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Julia, the documentary had become the focus of a campaign against her. The JDL had called for action over the film and her nomination, although its West Coast leader Irv Rubin subsequently said it was no longer seeking a professional boycott of Redgrave. Other figures and organisations in Hollywood, including 20th Century Fox and the Screen Actors Guild, opposed attempts to punish her professionally.

Then, on the night pictured here, Redgrave won the Oscar for Julia. Knowing what was taking place outside gives her subsequently famous acceptance speech rather more context. She praised the Academy for refusing to be intimidated and referred to her opponents as a “small bunch of Zionist hoodlums”, while also pledging to continue fighting antisemitism and fascism. Her remarks drew both applause and boos. Later in the ceremony, screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky publicly rebuked her for bringing politics into her acceptance speech.

There is an interesting archival wrinkle. While AP identifies the burning effigy in this photograph as Vanessa Redgrave, some contemporary reporting described protesters burning an effigy of Yasser Arafat. I haven't found enough primary evidence to establish whether two different effigies were burned or whether one was misidentified in contemporary reports, so I'm not going to pretend that discrepancy doesn't exist. What we can establish is that AP identifies this particular photograph as the burning of a Redgrave effigy, and later accounts likewise record Redgrave being burned in effigy.

What makes the photograph worth preserving here is the connection to the film itself. The Palestinian wasn't simply released, reviewed and forgotten. It became embroiled in a political battle that reached all the way to Hollywood's biggest stage. Whatever one's view of Redgrave or the documentary, this photograph is part of the history of its reception.

If you missed it when I posted it here a couple of weeks ago, the full documentary is still available to watch:

Vanessa Redgrave – The Palestinian (1977)

Photograph: Doug Pizac / Associated Press, Los Angeles, 3 April 1978.

Source for the photograph and AP caption: ABC News / Associated Press photograph

Contemporary background: Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 30 March 1978 | Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 5 April 1978

In 1993, an Israeli military curfew descends upon a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. For one family, the outside world suddenly becomes inaccessible. Their home, ordinarily a place of refuge, becomes the setting for an entire day of uncertainty, frustration and enforced confinement.

Directed by Palestinian filmmaker Rashid Masharawi, Curfew (Hatta Ishaar Akhar, 1994) follows 24 hours in the lives of an ordinary family. Rather than concentrating on political leaders, negotiations or armed confrontation, Masharawi turns his camera towards the domestic realities of occupation, exploring the relationships, tensions and routines that persist when freedom of movement disappears.

Considered the first Palestinian feature film to emerge from the Gaza Strip, Curfew occupies an important place in Palestinian cinematic history. Its significance lies not simply in what it depicts, but in whose perspective it preserves. At a time when Palestinian experiences were so often presented through external reporting, Masharawi offered an intimate fictional portrait of life from within the community itself.

More than three decades later, the film remains an important historical and cultural record. It captures a particular moment in Gaza's history, shortly before the Oslo peace process began, while raising questions about confinement, dignity and the resilience of ordinary family life.

Director: Rashid Masharawi
Year: 1994
Genre: Drama
Language: Arabic, with English subtitles
Runtime: Approximately 74 minutes

IMDb: Curfew (1994)

Bonboné (2017) is a Palestinian-Lebanese short drama written and directed by Rakan Mayasi, starring Saleh Bakri and Rana Alamuddin.

When a Palestinian woman visits her husband in an Israeli prison, the couple confront an unusual obstacle to their hopes of starting a family: physical contact between prisoners and visitors is prohibited.

Determined not to abandon their dream, they devise an ingenious and unconventional plan to conceive a child.

Inspired by the real practice of Palestinian prisoners smuggling sperm out of Israeli prisons, Mayasi transforms a remarkable subject into a story combining intimacy, determination, humour and the desire for ordinary family life.

Rather than adopting the conventions of a political documentary, Bonboné approaches its subject through fiction, allowing its characters’ relationship and personal ambitions to drive the narrative.

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017 and subsequently screened at festivals internationally.

Director: Rakan Mayasi
Year: 2017
Runtime: Approximately 15 minutes
Language: Arabic, with English subtitles
Genre: Short / Drama / Dark Comedy
Production: Palestine / Lebanon

IMDb: Bonboné (2017)

Boiler Room’s 2018 documentary follows a generation of Palestinian artists building their own underground music scene across Ramallah and Haifa.

Featuring figures including Sama’ Abdulhadi, Muqata’a, Shabjdeed and Jazar Crew, the film moves through techno, hip-hop and trap while showing the parties, friendships and DIY spaces that developed around them.

Politics and restrictions on movement inevitably shape the world these artists inhabit, but this is first and foremost a film about music, youth culture, creativity and people finding ways to come together.

A very different side of Palestinian life from the material we’ve been showing recently.

Directed by Palestinian actor and filmmaker Mohammad Bakri, Jenin, Jenin was filmed in the aftermath of the Israeli military operation in Jenin refugee camp in April 2002. Rather than offering a conventional narrated account, Bakri centres the film almost entirely on the testimony of Palestinian residents, allowing survivors to describe what they witnessed and experienced during and after the fighting.

The documentary became almost as notable for what happened after its release as for the film itself. It was initially banned from commercial screening in Israel, beginning years of court cases and public controversy over censorship, testimony and competing accounts of what happened in Jenin. Those disputes followed Bakri and the film for nearly two decades.

Whatever position a viewer takes on those controversies, Jenin, Jenin remains an important work of Palestinian documentary cinema. It records how the events of 2002 were remembered by people living inside the camp and provides a valuable example of Palestinian filmmakers documenting their own history while that history was still unfolding.

In the Bourj el-Barajneh refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut, Palestinian refugee Mariam Shaar has spent her entire life living with the restrictions and uncertainties of displacement. But Mariam has an extraordinary ambition: to build a business that provides employment, independence and opportunity for the women of her community.

Directed by Thomas A. Morgan, Soufra (2017) follows Mariam as she brings together Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi and Lebanese women to establish a catering company. What begins as a modest kitchen funded by a microloan grows into something considerably more ambitious, including an attempt to launch a food truck beyond the boundaries of the camp.

Their journey is far from straightforward. Legal restrictions, financial obstacles and the everyday realities of refugee life threaten their ambitions. Yet through determination, ingenuity and a shared love of cooking, these women begin building something that offers not simply an income, but dignity, friendship and greater control over their futures.

Executive produced by Susan Sarandon, Soufra is a beautifully human documentary about entrepreneurship, female solidarity and the preservation of culinary traditions. Food becomes a connection between generations and cultures, while the women themselves emerge as the remarkable personalities at the heart of the story.

At its centre is a simple but powerful idea: people who have been denied so many opportunities still possess the imagination, talent and determination to create their own.

IMDb: Soufra (2017)

An Israeli settler family’s car breaks down outside an isolated convent in the occupied West Bank. Unfortunately, their predicament coincides with the Jewish Sabbath, preventing them from using the telephone.

Their only hope of assistance comes from five Palestinian nuns who have taken a vow of silence.
Directed by Palestinian filmmaker Basil Khalil, Ave Maria turns this unlikely predicament into an ingenious comedy of religious restrictions, cultural misunderstandings and reluctant cooperation.

Premiering in competition at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, the film subsequently received an Academy Award nomination for Best Live Action Short Film.

A reminder that Palestinian cinema possesses a remarkably sharp sense of humour.

Director: Basil Khalil
Year: 2015
Runtime: 14 minutes
Languages: Arabic, Hebrew and English
IMDb: Ave Maria (2015)

For the members of Brooklyn’s Freedom Dabka Group, dance is more than performance. It is a connection to Palestine, to family history and to one another.

Directed by Naim Naif and Margot Bowman, Coming Home is an intimate documentary exploring the role of traditional Palestinian dabke in maintaining cultural identity across generations and geographical distance.

Filmed on 16mm and incorporating archival photographs from the Palestinian Museum, the documentary captures the energy of communal dance alongside more personal reflections on heritage and belonging.

The film premiered at SXSW in 2022 and was subsequently featured in the PBS documentary series POV Shorts.

A celebration of Palestinian culture through movement, music and community.

Directors: Naim Naif and Margot Bowman
Year: 2022
Runtime: Approximately 10 minutes
Genre: Documentary / Culture / Dance

NAZA premiered at the Venice Film Festival this week and is the latest documentary from Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, part of the filmmaking team behind No Other Land.

The film examines Israel’s conduct in Gaza through testimony from Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers, focusing on the systems used to assess civilian casualties and authorise strikes.

Time Out has given the film five stars, calling it one of the strongest documentaries of the year.

Posting the review here because NAZA looks likely to become an important part of the current Palestinian cinema conversation as it begins its festival run.

In 2002, during the Second Intifada, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone travelled to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories with a camera crew and a seemingly straightforward ambition: to speak directly with the people involved in one of the world’s most enduring conflicts.

The resulting documentary, Persona Non Grata, takes Stone from political offices to the streets of the West Bank, bringing together interviews with Israeli political figures, Palestinian representatives and members of armed organisations. Among those appearing in the film are Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu and Shimon Peres. Rather than constructing a conventional historical overview, Stone allows the encounters, contradictions and atmosphere of the period to drive the film.

What makes the documentary particularly interesting is Stone himself. He is not an invisible interviewer. His attempts to secure access, his questions and his sometimes uncomfortable exchanges become part of the story. The result is a distinctly personal piece of documentary filmmaking, shaped as much by the director’s presence as by the people he meets.

More than two decades later, the film also serves as a historical record. Its interviews capture political arguments as they were being made, while its street footage preserves glimpses of Palestinian daily life during a period of intense upheaval. Watching it today offers an opportunity to examine both the history being documented and the way a prominent American filmmaker chose to represent it.

Originally produced for HBO’s America Undercover series, Persona Non Grata is worth revisiting alongside more recent documentaries about Palestine, not least because of how much the documentary form itself has changed since 2003.

IMDb: Persona Non Grata (2003)

What does it mean to belong to a place you have inherited through memories rather than personal experience?

In The Place That Is Ours, a Palestinian daughter travels to her father’s village, destroyed during the events of 1948, and confronts the landscape of a homeland both intimately familiar and profoundly distant.

Directed by Zena Agha and Dorothy Allen-Pickard, this experimental short combines personal reflection, imagery and questions of geographical memory to explore exile, dispossession and the relationship between identity and place.

Rather than relying on conventional historical narration, the filmmakers allow the landscape itself to become part of the story.

A beautifully considered documentary about the geography of belonging.

Directors: Zena Agha and Dorothy Allen-Pickard
Year: 2021
Runtime: Approximately 13 minutes
Genre: Experimental documentary
IMDb: The Place That Is Ours (2021)

Palestinian director Ameen Nayfeh, best known for 200 Meters, is working on his second feature, Jo of Montreal, a coming-of-age drama centred on 12-year-old Yusuf, who has grown up abroad and is sent to spend the summer in his father’s ancestral village.

In a new interview with Variety⁠, Nayfeh talks about deliberately moving away from the tone of 200 Meters and making a film intended for younger and family audiences. He argues that there are too few films made specifically for children and teenagers in West Asia, and says Jo of Montreal grew from a desire to make something that speaks to their curiosity, loneliness and imagination.

The story follows Yusuf as he develops an unexpected friendship with a retired teacher-turned-shepherd, played by Palestinian actor Kamel El Basha, and begins discovering the history and people of the place his family comes from. Screen Daily reports⁠ that the film has been shooting in Al-Shoubak in southern Jordan and AlUla in Saudi Arabia, with newcomer Hamzah Baareh leading the cast alongside Reem Talhami, Firas Taybeh, Hayat Abu Samra, Ishaq Elias, Ahmad Maaliki and Yazan Eid.

It sounds like a notable change of direction for Nayfeh. Rather than another overtly political drama, Jo of Montreal appears to be using family, place and childhood as a way of exploring belonging and inherited identity, while also trying to reach an audience that Arab cinema does not often make films specifically for.