Palestinian cinema recognized at 2026 Oscars

Hind Rajab

“No Other Land” made history as the first Palestinian film to win the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary at the Oscars in 2025, despite having no U.S. distributor and a limited viewing audience. Produced by Palestinian activist and journalist Basel Adra, using a handheld camera, the film chronicled years of struggle by Palestinians. The film focused on a collection of villages known as Masafer Yatta, which is constantly facing the unrelenting drive by the Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) and Israeli settlers who are forcefully trying to evict Palestinians. (workers.org/2025/02/84148/)

This year, Palestinian cinema is gaining significant international recognition through three films. “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” directed by Kaouther Ben Hania and submitted by Tunisia, will be considered for an Oscar for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards on March 15. Two other Palestinian films — “Palestine 36” and “All That’s Left of You” — made the “short list” of 15 films that were considered for the award.

In January 2024, six-year-old Hind Rajab was fleeing Gaza City with relatives when their car was shelled by the IOF, killing everyone but Hind and a cousin, who was killed a short time later. Trapped in the car with the bodies of her family for several hours, Hind called the Palestine Red Crescent Society seeking help. When PRCS paramedics finally reached the scene to rescue her, an Israeli tank attacked again, killing Hind and the paramedics.

When Tunisian director and writer Kaouther Ben Hania heard the recordings of Hind’s call, she decided to produce a docudrama, “The Voice of Hind Rahab.” “Palestinian voices are suppressed and invisible,” Ben Hania told the New York Times on Feb. 13, noting that Hind’s was hard to forget. “Once you hear her voice, you can’t unhear it.”

The film weaves around Hind’s pleading voice and dramatizes the tense rescue efforts of the paramedics attempting to reach her despite numerous barriers put up by the Israelis. Due to the intense Israeli bombardment in Gaza, no one could reach the car until 12 days later, when they found the burned-out shells of the ambulance and the car, which was struck by 335 bullet holes with its windows blown out. 

In Philadelphia, protests are regularly held outside the corporate offices of Day & Zimmermann, the company responsible for producing the munitions that killed Hind.

Film traces three generations

“All That’s Left of You,” by Palestinian director Cherien Dabis, who also acts in the film, was submitted by Jordan for this year’s Oscars. The film traces the history of three generations of a Palestinian family beginning in Jaffa in 1948 during the Nakba. It jumps to 1978 when the family is struggling to survive in a refugee camp in the West Bank and later to 1988 during the First Intifada against Israeli occupation.

This writer was able to see the film in Philadelphia in February, where Dabis spoke to the audience about the film after the showing. Dabis described how she was inspired by her own family’s trauma and her desire to explore “what it is to endure decades of political violence and how that changes you.”

In addition to Dabis, the film stars late Palestinian actor Mohammad Bakri and his sons Adam and Saleh. While production started in the West Bank in May 2023, the film crew was forced to leave after Oct. 7, 2023, so the remainder was filmed in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. Dabis noted, “It was great that we got to work with the Palestinian refugee community in the telling of, essentially, their own story.”

Farmworker revolt depicted

“Palestine 36,” written and directed by Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir, tells the story of the 1936-1939 farmworker-led Arab revolt and mass strike against British colonialism and the Balfour Declaration’s mandate, which made Palestine a “national home for the Jewish people.” Jacir, who lives in Bethlehem, on the West Bank, focused on the events depicted in the film to show how the British empire set the stage for Zionist occupation.

The film moves back and forth between two Palestinian worlds — one where farmworkers are losing their jobs and land to Zionist settlers and the other in Jerusalem, where wealthy landowners downplay the workers’ struggle. Wanting to stress the central issue of land rights for the Palestinian people, Jacir’s team spent months restoring an entire historic village in the West Bank, only to have production halted after Oct. 7, 2023. They eventually moved to Jordan, where they had to rebuild another village from scratch. The film will open in New York on March 20 before a countrywide release in April.

While not the first films on Palestine nor the only Palestinian films released this year, taken together these three offer an expansive look into the historic struggles for Palestinian liberation from the time of British occupation in the 1930s to the current struggles against Israeli genocide in Gaza. They are not to be missed. If these films are shown in your city, make every effort to attend. If not, reach out to your local progressive movie venues to request they be shown.