Hiam Abass is a prolific Palestinian actress and filmmaker, now very popular thanks to American series Succession and Ramy. The documentary Bye Bye Tiberias directed by her daughter, Lina Soualem, and in which she stars represents Palestine at the 2024 Oscars in the category of best international film. And compete these days at the Marrakech film festival. He narrates his return home, years after leaving his town to dedicate himself to acting in France. Her return marks the reunion of four generations of women after decades of separation.
Abass’s name appears in the credits of several of the titles on this list of series, films and documentaries available on platforms that try to explain or analyze, each in their own way, the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
‘Omar’ (2013)
Available in Filmin.
One of the best-known stories on the subject, Paradise Now, a candidate for the Oscar for best foreign language film in 2006, is not available on platforms. But one of the subsequent titles by its director, Hany Abu-Assad, is also a candidate for the Hollywood Academy Award. The young man who gives the story its title is used to dodging the bullets of the troops guarding the wall in the occupied territories. He does it to secretly visit his beloved Nadia. This stylized romantic drama is much more than a reinvention of the classic Romeo and Juliet. He is not afraid to be realistic to the point of crudeness.
‘Born in Gaza’ (2014)
Available in Netflix, Filmin and Movistar Plus+.
This documentary by Hernán Zin, recorded just after the Israeli offensive on the Strip in 2014, soberly compiles the testimonies of Gazan teenagers who saw their relatives die. Or they almost died themselves.
‘Fauda’ (2015-)
Available in Netflix.
Although each viewer has an opinion on the degree of equidistance that the series maintains with respect to the conflict, it is undoubtedly its most popular story internationally in recent years. The title refers to the Arabic word equivalent to the term chaos. It focuses over four well-shot and written seasons on an elite Israeli unit in charge of complex anti-terrorist missions.
‘Chronicle of a Disappearance’ (1996)
Available in Netflix.
The prestigious Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman returned to Israel to record in this film without a specific plot his loss of identity as an exile in New York. He stood in front of the camera with his family, friends and neighbors. The result is as mundane as it is bleak.
Hamas, the strategy of chaos
Available in Art.
The public channel Arte has compiled in the Spanish catalog of its free a la carte service a selection of videos and reports related to the decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. One of them analyzes how the military strategy of the Hamas terrorist group has evolved over the years, after the attack of October 7, 2023 demonstrated a new level of sophistication, both in terms of weaponry and strategy.
Inch’Allah’ (2012)
Available in Filmin.
This Canadian film offers an outside look. Directed by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, it tells the story of a woman who works in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank. She helps pregnant women in a makeshift clinic, but the daily checks by the Israeli Army make her work difficult.
‘The Lemon Trees’ (2008)
Available in Filmin.
Hiam Abass stars in this analysis of the conflict through a drama in which a Palestinian widow sees how the Israeli Minister of Defense intervenes in her lemon field. His land adjoins the politician’s house and his trees become a hindrance to him.
‘A weekend in Gaza’ (2022)
Available in Rakuten TV and Movistar Plus+.
The issue has also given rise to black humor, as in this recent British comedy. In it, a journalist tries to flee Israel when the spread of a virus restricts air and sea traffic. Isolated Gaza suddenly becomes the safest place in the area.
‘A bottle in the Gaza Sea’ (2011)
Available in Filmin.
The naivety of a young French woman living in Jerusalem drives this story. After witnessing a suicide terrorist attack, she decides to write a letter to an imaginary Palestinian in which she is conciliatory between the two sides of the conflict. He throws the message enclosed in a bottle into the water. And a few days later he receives a response. Hiam Abass also intervenes.
The other’s son (2012)
Available in Filmin.
A hackneyed and soap opera plot, that of the baby exchange, gives rise to a French drama by Lorraine Lévy very well put together around two families who, evidently, come from the two opposing sides. When he prepares to enter the Israeli army, Joseph discovers that he is not his parents’ biological son. He was born in the middle of the war and was accidentally exchanged for Yacine, the baby of a Palestinian family living in the occupied West Bank.
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