IDFA 2011
5 Broken Cameras
5 caméras brisées
Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi
France, Israel
2011
90 min
World Premiere
IDFA Special Jury Award for Feature-Length Documentary
Palestinian farm laborer Emad has five video cameras, and each of them tells a different part of the story of his village's resistance to Israeli oppression. Emad lives in Bil'in, just west of the city of Ramallah in the West Bank. Using the first camera, he recorded how the bulldozers came to rip the olive trees out of the ground in 2005. Here, a wall was built directly through his fellow villagers' land to separate the advancing Jewish settlements from the Palestinians. In the first days of resistance to the Jewish colonists and the ever-present Israeli soldiers, Emad's son Gibreel was born. Scenes shift from the infant growing into a precocious preschooler to the many peaceful acts of protest, and the steady progress of the construction of the dividing wall. Sympathizers from all over the world, including from Israel, provide help as resistance develops, but when the situation intensifies, people are arrested and villagers are killed. Emad keeps on filming despite pleas from his wife, who fears reprisals. It makes for an intensely powerful personal document about one village's struggle against violence and oppression.
Credits
Screening copy
Guy DVD Films
Guy DVD Films
Distribution Benelux
Jan Vrijman Fund
Jan Vrijman Fund
World Sales
CAT&Docs
CAT&Docs
Narrator
Involved TV Channel
IKON,
France 5,
Channel 8,
YLE,
RTS - Radio Television Suisse
IKON,
France 5,
Channel 8,
YLE,
RTS - Radio Television Suisse
Screenplay
Cinematography