Askwith Collection

Two documentary films by Mai Masri. Children of Shatila traces daily life in the Shatila refugee camp, flimed through two video cameras given to two Palestinian refugee children. Frontiers of dreams and fears relates the friendship of two Palestinian refugee girls, tracing their hopes and fears and the quality of life in refugee camps.

Soraida is a Palestinian woman living in Ramallah, in the occupied territories. In this city under siege and a strict curfew, she fights her own battle: despite the military occupation, violence and oppression, she is determined not to lose her humanity.

Provides a personal meditation on what it means to be Palestinian. Examines the effect of the political impasse in the Middle East on the identity of the Palestinian people.

Tells of the impact the Arab Israeli conflict has had on the individual lives and families of two Palestinian women.

Simone Bitton etches a haunting portrait of one of the most profound geographical markers of our time -- the wall of separation constructed by Israel that shields it from adjacent, conflicted Palestinian territories

A documentary about the Amers, a Palestinian family, who live surrounded by the West Bank wall.

A film about Palestinian women ex-detainees speaking about their experiences during their years of imprisonment in Israeli jails. They also discuss how difficult their daily life is in the current Palestinian Intifada.

A look at some of the many Palestinians who illegally cross the border into Israel, and how they share their food, belongings, and stories, as well as a fear of the soldiers and police. Includes interviews with the director.

Beirut Diaries: through the diaries of Nadine Zaidan, a look at how life was affected by the assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. 33 days: After Lebanon was attacked by Israel in 2006, a group of people - including a theatre director, a journalist, and a news desk director - try to report the current news, provide aid, and help the children living in the devastation.

A chronicle which provides a rare window into the international perception of the Iraq War, courtesy of Al Jazeera, the Arab world's most popular news outlet.

A group of Palestinian tourists take a three-day sightseeing trip to Israel.

A short film about a group of independent Palestinian filmmakers trying to make a film in the Occupied Territories. They encounter the resistance of the Israeli military authorities and their film project is stopped. Filmed entirely on location in Palestine, December 2001

Follows Iraqi director Hayder Mousa Daffar and his team of contributing filmmakers as they share their vision of life in Baghdad under the U.S. occupation.

Documents the lives, hopes, and dreams of Iraqi mothers, children, teachers, sheiks, and insurgents during the upheaval of a nation being born.

Go behind the scenes of one Iraqi family's struggle to survive amidst the carnage of the growing Shia insurgency. Nineteen-year-old Ibrahim dreams of revenge when his brother is shot and killed by an American patrol.

Working alone in Iraq over eight months, director/cinematographer Laura Poitras creates an extraordinarily intimate portrait of Iraqis living under U.S. occupation.

Documentary in three parts. Offers a series of intimate, passionately-felt portraits of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

A look at the Iraqi insurgency, through individuals involved in the struggle against coalition forces, as they reveal their motivations, hopes and goals, and more.

The rarely discussed topic of the affects of the Darfur conflict (2003-present) on the environment is the axis around which the 3 main stories of this documentary revolve

Presents the true stories of three Iraqi people who endured life in a psychiatric hospital in Baghdad during the Iraq War and then were in the streets after their hospital is decimated.

Born a peasant in 1898, Umm Kulthum earned a position of great wealth and influence in the Arab world as a popular and beloved singer. This film places her life in the context of 20th century Egypt. Includes concert footage, film clips, and interviews.

Taqwacore chronicles the nascent Muslim punk rock movement in America. It was inspired by the work of Michael Knight, a convert to Islam who wrote the novel The Taqwacores (a term combining the Muslim concept of God consciousness with hardcore punk).

A group of Lebanese women try to ease religious tensions between Christians and Muslims in their village.

Two petty crooks, Adil and Karim, live in the Moroccan city of Casablanca or 'Casanegra' as they know it. To escape their bleak lives, they decide to carry out one last criminal job that could either guarantee their freedom or destroy them

Muna Farah, a Palestinian single mom, struggles to maintain her optimistic spirit in the daily grind of intimidating West Bank checkpoints, the constant nagging of a controlling mother, and the haunting shadows of a failed marriage. Everything changes when she is granted a U.S. green card and moves with her teenage son to small town Illinois.

Yussef is a twelve-year-old boy who lives in an imaginary world of his own and often escapes from the surrounding violence to the beautiful Gaza countryside. Yussef meets Aida and falls in love, but before he can marry her he must find three jewels

Melodrama about a famous dancer who marries a handsome young doctor. Their marriage is threatened when the doctor's scheming Italian nurse makes the wife jealous, which drives her to drink.

Wadjda, a fun-loving 10-year-old girl living in Saudi Arabia, has her heart set on a beautiful new bicycle. However, her mother won't allow it, fearing repercussions from a society that sees bicycles as dangerous to a girl's virtue.

A group of hedonistic middle-aged friends gather eatch night on a luxurious houseboat for dancing, love-making and smoking hashish. When a young news reporter visits the houseboat to write a story on the group, she is outraged to learn the tragic depths of their social alienation.

One of the most influential political films in history, The Battle of Algiers, by Gillo Pontecorvo (Kapò), vividly re-creates a key year in the tumultuous Algerian struggle for independence from the occupying French in the 1950s. As violence escalates on both sides, children shoot soldiers at point-blank range, women plant bombs in cafés, and French soldiers resort to torture to break the will of the insurgents.

Noura is an inquisitive 13-year-old whose eyes are opened to his own sexual desires when he visits the local Turkish bathhouse with his mother. But just as Noura is awakening to the pleasures of the fair sex, he risks being wrestled from their tender, affactionate companionship and being thrust into the callow and rigid company of men.

18-year-old Yehia retreats from the poverty, death and suffering all around him in World War II Egypt and dreams of one day becoming a Hollywood filmmaker. But after he falls in love and discovers the harsh truths behind the European occupation of his country, Yehia reassesses his identity and allegiances.