Jenin Jenin:
"Where is God," an elderly man desperately wonders when surveying the debris in the Palestinian refugee camp Jenin.

Directed and co-produced by Palestinian actor Mohammad Bakri, Jenin Jenin includes testimony from Jenin residents after the Israeli army's Defensive Wall operation. The city and camp were the scenes of fierce fighting which ended with Jenin flattened and scores of Palestinians dead. Palestinians as well as numerous human rights groups accused Israel of committing war crimes in the attack. The United Nations appointed a commission of inquiry, but Israel refused to let its members visit the scene.

Banned in Israel, Jenin Jenin is dedicated to Iyad Samudi, the producer of the film, who returned home to Yamun after the shooting of the film was completed. On June 23, as Israeli forces besieged Yamun, Samudi was shot and killed as he was leaving a militarily-closed area with three friends.

Time: 54 minutes | Year: 2002
In Arabic w/ English subtitles
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Since You Left:
Palestinian actor Mohammad Bakri has been a popular figure in both Israeli and Palestinian cinema of the past three decades. His long list of film credits includes Hannah K. (1983), Beyond the Walls (1984), Cup Final (1991), Tale of the Three Jewels (1995), The Milky Way (1997) and Private (2004).

With his second directorial effort, Since You Left, Bakri visits the grave of his mentor, Emil Habibi, a prominent Palestinian author and politician. In this intimate setting, Bakri attempts to summarize for Habibi some of the personal and political transformations that have occurred in Israel and Palestine since the author's death.

The greater part of the narrative is concerned with the two events which shattered Bakri's life in the years after his mentor's passing. The first is his nephew's involvement in an attack on a public bus in the city of Meiron which left 9 Israelis dead, and the subsequent backlash against the entire Bakri family. The second is the uproar caused by Bakri's 2002 documentary film, Jenin Jenin, which was banned in Israel for two years upon its release. Rich in archival footage and personal film clips, Since You Left is a poignant, poetic and deeply personal letter to a departed friend and fellow artist.

Time: 58 minutes | Year: 2005
In English, Hebrew and Arabic w/ English subtitles
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Rental Information
This film is available from AFD for public screenings and television broadcast. For information regarding rental rates and formats, please contact [email protected] for institutional/non-theatrical screenings, or [email protected] for theatrical, festival, television, or other bookings.