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International support for Palestine’s rights is growing, including Hollywood, where thousands of film workers have signed a pledge to avoid Israel’s film groups considered involved in the war in Gaza, and high-profile stars are supporting movies that center the Palestinian experience.

Yet, Palestinian-produced films continue to face challenges to obtain distribution and achieve exposure – despite a major Academy Awards victory recently. To highlight the Palestinian vibrant heritage of cinema, we invited prominent Palestinian directors and artists to share their top Palestinian films.

‘By the End, I Was Moved to Tears’: Mo Amer on All That’s Left Of You

Director Cherien Dabis’s film All That’s Left of You, which premiered recently at the Sundance Film Festival, is a unique film, bold and memorable. By telling the story of a single Palestinian family, from its roots in pre-Nakba the city of Jaffa through decades of displacement, it does not just tell a tale – it celebrates a legacy.

The cinematography are rich and immersive. Each scene feels purposeful, every frame a recollection – the citrus orchards of Jaffa, the roads of Nablus, the alienation of displacement. The acting are unforgettable, showcasing Dabis’s extraordinary versatility together with multiple generations of the Bakris – the family of performers most associated with Palestinian cinema. They are complex, restrained and deeply authentic.

What’s most impressive is how smoothly the film shifts between different eras without ever losing its emotional throughline. Each decade of the Palestinian people’s story is depicted with stunning detail, both visually and emotionally. The filmmaking is skillful in that way, leading you through years with clarity and care.

By the end, I was moved to tears. All That’s Left of You isn’t just about the history, it’s about the invisible ways it influences who we are. It’s a movie that lingers – not because of drama, but because of truth.

• Mo Amer is a Palestinian American actor and comic and the creator of a well-known Netflix show.

‘A Groundbreaking Masterpiece’: Cherien Dabis on Divine Intervention

A sunglasses-clad Palestinian woman defiantly walks through a security post. Israeli troops look on, weapons pointed, baffled. Her presence subdues them and causes the watchtower crashing down. It’s an memorable moment from Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention that has stayed with me ever since I initially watched the movie. I was a second-year graduate film student at Columbia University when it opened in the United States in 2003. I recall being amazed by its impact, its defiance, and its sheer boldness.

At a time when the majority of Palestinian cinema leaned toward the serious or tragic, Suleiman carved a new path. Through satire, deadpan acting, and near-silent observation, he captured the bizarre absurdity of life under military control. Playing the film’s mute main character himself, he placed his own perspective at the core of the narrative. That choice felt revolutionary. His performance was composed and understated, which only magnified the tension all around him.

Divine Intervention is both intimately personal and politically charged. Its imagery is global, yet grounded in the fractured reality of Palestinian self. The filmmaker turns separation, displacement and defiance into something resembling art. The result is poignant, surreal, at times hilarious and always deeply truthful.

There was nothing remotely like it in Palestinian film at the time. It remains unique. It continues to be, for me, the most innovative and imaginative Palestinian movie ever created.

• Cherien Dabis is a Palestinian-American director, screenwriter, producer and actor, whose most recent film is a selected submission for the Academy Awards.

‘A Remarkable New Voice’: Hany Abu Assad on To a Land Unknown

In my view, a great film needs to do two aspects. It needs to provide an experience that’s unfamiliar, feeling and smart. It needs to give me an element I’ve been missing – a point of view that contradicts my belief system, a way to think about issues beyond my own world, a view to a distinct era and place. Simply put, I need to feel enriched, emotionally and intellectually.

Second, it needs to impress me with its skill. A ability that is not focused trying to impress but is employed to open my eyes to something more important.

The movie To a Land Unknown, which was launched recently, is exactly this kind of film. Made by Mahdi Fleifel, it is a tale about two Palestinian friends looking for better lives as displaced persons in Greece.

To a Land Unknown allowed me to experience what it’s like to be a at-risk refugee, in a strange country, where all factors works against your attempts to escape the ghetto. It demonstrated me that in certain situations, although conditions beyond your influence work against you, you yourself can still turn into your own biggest obstacle. And its dance between content and visual form astonished me in its craft.

In To a Land Unknown, Palestine has gained a talent that will support its cause without shedding a single drop of violence.

• Hany Abu-Assad is a Palestinian-Dutch director, screenwriter and two-time Academy Award nominee for his celebrated works.

‘It Shows Israel Views Even Cows as a Threat’: Basel Adra on The Wanted 18

One of my favorite Palestinian films is The Wanted 18. It tells the narrative of Palestinians in Beit Sahour, a town near the city of Bethlehem in the West Bank, during the first intifada of the late 1980s. It records their effort to {